Land of The Silver Sun Part II
by darkstorm5000
Summary: The XMen are in Japan for Logan and Mariko’s impending nuptials, but the happy couple might not even make it to the altar if HYDRA has their way. Plus, an XMan is changed forever in the erupting conflict. Part 4 of 4 posted.
1. Vendettas

Land of the Silver Sun pt. II

Written by Darkstorm5000

Disclaimer: The X-Men and related characters in their various incarnations are the property of Marvel Comics and Marvel Enterprises.

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A/N: This story picks up after my previous fic The New Mutants.

Part 1- Vendettas

Location: _Miyagi Prefecture, Japan_

Streaking across Japan's nighttime sky the Blackbird, the modified supersonic-jet belonging to the covert superhero group known as the X-Men, a stealthily made its final approach towards the outskirts of Agarashima, one of the nation's major seaport cities. The craft then made its landing in a small clearing on the grounds of the expansive estate belonging to the Clan Yashida, one of the most esteemed and powerful families in all of Japan. The architecture of the Clan Yashida's ancestral compound harkened back to Japan's feudal days, and just like the Yashida family itself, it was a place very richly steeped in history and tradition. And in a few days, it would also serve as the site for those gathered to celebrate the marriage of Logan to the Clan's _Daimyo_, Lady Mariko Yashida, who now sat as the Clan's undisputed leader.

"Rogue, like, I know you told me this place was big, but you dropped the ball on givin' me the 411. I mean, just take a look, this castle's freakin' huge!" Jubilation Lee was the first to comment, as she was also the first to come down the ramp of the Blackbird after it had sat down right outside of the tall and protective stonewalls of the Yashida compound, doing so in a secluded area that was surrounded by numerous trees.

Jubilee was profoundly taken by the sheer size of the estate and by the sight of the immense palace structure within its protective walls. In particular, the huge _donjon_ in its center managed to grab her attention almost immediately, which had been built in a very traditional architectural design. This castle tower was most visibly marked by its distinct roof angles, with eaves and overhangs that ran along its edges and that noticeably curved upwards. But even more than that, Jubilee was somewhat surprised to see a man-made moat that encompassed the entire compound, a defensive feature that had been constructed hundreds of years earlier to help further dissuade those hostile enemy forces that might be tempted to breach the compound's perimeter.

"I wonder if Mariko's even gon' remember me?" Remy Lebeau smiled a little, as he came down the plane's ramp next with his dark brown trench coat draped onto his slender physique.

"Ah don't see how she, or anyone else for that matter, could forget a scoundrel like you." Rogue humorously replied, as she followed Jubilee and Remy down to the ground below, zipping up her dark-green leather jacket in the nighttime air.

"Dat's funny, 'specially comin' from a girl who calls herself Rogue. Some might say it's almost like de pot callin' de kettle black." Remy turned around and retorted in kind, referring to what the actual definition of a 'rogue' really was.

"Oh shut up, and just keep on walkin'!" Rogue replied, as she playfully slapped Remy on the shoulder with her gloved-hand, while they continued on down to the bottom of the ramp together. But, Rogue couldn't help but laughing a little to herself at Remy's quick-witted, and very on-the-mark response.

As Jubilee, Remy, and Rogue gathered at the bottom of the ramp, Ororo Munroe, Scott Summers, Alison Blaire, Kurt Wagner, Peter Rasputin, and Kitty Pryde soon followed them down to grass that by this time of year was almost completely brown below. They were all wearing their own varied stylings of jackets, coats, and heavy sweaters, which seemed to be a case of extremely fortuitous planning since the temperature in Agarashima at the moment was apparently much colder than the climate they had left back in New York. The crisp conditions were due to the fact that they were obviously now in the autumn season of the year, but more importantly, because the Yashida family's compound had been built on a much higher mountain elevation above the city.

But, their warmer dress also resulted from the Blackbird's special new thermal cooling system, which had been installed by the mutant machine-smith named Forge a few months ago. It helped to further mask the plane from the heat-imaging sensors of other jets in the air, and from radar arrays on the ground below, but had the added effect of keeping the cockpit and cabin of the Blackbird fairly chilly throughout most of their flights.

After everyone had disembarked from the plane, they activated a holographic tarp that shot up from the roof of the Blackbird and came down over the plane to camouflage it in the forest environment that it had touched down in. With Alison and Jubilee's illuminating mutant powers to guide them in the near pitch-black darkness, the X-Men then proceeded across a moderately sized wooded-area towards the compound. They were soon met by members of Mariko's security staff at a huge drawbridge, which led up to the immense main entrance gate of the Yashida fortress. The huge gate was quickly opened for them and out came Toru, who served as Mariko's personal bodyguard, to escort the X-Men inside. He took them to a spacious living room within the residence, where Logan and Mariko had been sitting together and simply enjoying each other's company for most of the evening, as they had been patiently awaiting their friends' arrival.

"And here I was startin' to think you guys had gone and found a more pressin' engagement to attend." Logan said to no one in particular yet, after his heightened senses had detected their presence in the corridor right outside. Logan then stood up from the sofa in the living room that he and Mariko had been seated in together and immediately went over to greet his friends.

As the screened door slid open in front of the X-Men they were all rather surprised to see that, instead of having on his usual blue jeans and t-shirt, Logan was dressed in a black _kimono_ robe, gray _hakama_ trousers, and a pair of _tatami_ sandals.

"The only engagement that we have been looking forward to attending, is the one in which you invited us to." Ororo happily replied, as she removed her long, black duster coat and came over to give Logan a very warm hug, while everyone else proceeded in behind her following their fairly lengthy journey, "You look awfully impressive in your new attire."

"As opposed to what? Me lookin' just plain awful, 'Ro?" Logan grinned and whimsically replied, as he stood back and looked right into Ororo's eyes, before giving a her quick peck on the side of her face. Logan then stood beside Ororo and spoke to the others, who were all still filtering in, "C'mon in guys, I want all of you to meet Mariko."

The X-Men now watched as Mariko poisedly stood up from the sofa, dressed in an elegant yellow kimono robe with blue and red floral prints on it, which had a matching print sash that had been meticulously tied around her waist. To finish this vintage look, Mariko had _kanzashi_ pinned into her hair, which were exquisite-looking handmade silk ornaments that had been designed in yellow, ivory, and pink-colored blossom shapes and that draped down across one-side. As they watched Mariko now come over to join them, most of the X-Men couldn't help but to marvel at the fact that Logan really hadn't been exaggerating to them, when he had previously attempted to describe just how radiantly-beautiful and graceful Mariko was.

Well, for the exception of two individuals in the room, who had previously made the acquaintance of the lady in question.

"Mariko, nice seein' you again. And, lookin' beautiful as ever I must say, _Milady_." Remy smiled and came over to compliment her in his own distinct manner, as he and Rogue had been the next two entrants into the room behind Ororo and Jubilee.

"I am glad to see you as well, Lebeau-san. And, I am even more pleased that this time you chose to make use of the front door, rather than scaling the outer wall." Mariko stopped right in front of Remy, as she looked up at him and replied in a very serious tone.

Mariko was referring to the night when she, Logan, and Rogue first met Remy, after he had broken into her ancestral residence in an attempt to steal a priceless family heirloom. Mariko then cordially and respectfully bowed to Remy and Rogue, since they along with Logan had been instrumental in coming to her aid when her brother had attempted to violently oust Mariko from her position of leadership as the Head of the Clan Yashida.

"I am so very glad that you both, that all of you, could make it here." Mariko now said to Remy, Rogue, and the rest of her guests, as she straightened back up and an unmistakable smile came to her face.

"Congratulations Logan, you're a lucky man." Scott said next, as he came over to Logan and shook his hand, while Alison went over to where Rogue and Remy were standing so that she could make her introduction to Mariko.

"Thanks, Slim." Logan heartily responded, as he firmly gripped Scott's hand. And just by manner in which these two men were interacting with one another, it was obvious that whatever animosities that Scott and Logan might have once harbored towards each other at one time, was now ancient history between them.

"Heh, with the way I keep hearin' about how things 'tween you and Ali have gotten so friendly, it might not be too long before you two're takin' the big plunge too?" Logan now jokingly replied, as he took a step back and continued talking to Scott.

"I don't think we're ready to start picking out china patterns just yet." Scott smiled and replied, as Logan then took notice of the two other individuals now standing behind Scott, "So Pete, you decide to start some kinda protest against footwear while I've been away from the school?"

"More like they didn't have any slippers large enough to fit me, when the staff had us remove our shoes at the entryway." Peter replied, as the towering young man standing on the green and white carpeted floor wearing a gray knit-sweater, black pants, and a pair of dark-colored socks began to smirk a little, "But, if I can survive days on end out in the frigid winters of my homeland in Siberia, then I think I will fare just as well here."

"That may be, but from one mountain man to another, I'm gonna make sure you fit in with the rest of these civilized folks. In the mornin', I'll have someone go 'n find somethin' that fits you." Logan laughed, as he put his right hand up on Peter's massive shoulder and then spoke to the other person standing close to him, "You remember to bring what I asked you to in the wedding invitation, Elf?"

"Of course, Logan! I would never dream of keeping a man and his honestly-won beer apart, which one of the staff members was kind enough to retire into the kitchen for you to help keep it cold." Kurt playfully replied to Logan, as the two very close friends now shook hands and greeted one another, "Although, I'm certain that you will have little trouble in finishing that case before the night is through."

"Got that right!" Logan affirmably stated for him, as he then began to look around the room as though something, or someone, was missing.

But, Logan didn't need his heightened mutant senses to tell him who that someone was, as he visually scanned the group gathered in the living room with him, "When I spoke to Chuck the other day, I know he said he wouldn't be able to make the trip, but it still looks like you're one head short. Where's Drake at?"

"He decided to stay back at the school, and help the Professor keep an eye on things with the rest of the junior students." Rogue said to Logan, as she now came over to give a hug to the man who had been a friend, a mentor, and so much more to her.

"That's too bad." Logan replied, as he began to chuckle again, "And here I was countin' on him to serve up party-ice for a hundred."

"I almost forgot. It may not be anything as practical as ice for drinks, but Bobby did send you a gift." Peter now said, as he went over and slid the living room's _shoji _screen door open, going out in the hallway so that he could retrieve something.

Peter immediately came back into the living room carrying with him what looked like a large ice-chest, with a computerized attachment connected to the top of it. Peter then sat the huge self-refrigerated chest down on the floor and opened it, showing Logan and Mariko the detailed ice-sculpture of two swans kissing inside, which Bobby had pain-stakingly created using his mutant powers.

"It is very beautiful." Mariko remarked, as she stood next to Logan and he put his right arm around her waist, while they looked at the thoughtful present that had been given to them.

"Bobby stayed up most of the night before we left finishing it up, and he worked really hard trying to make sure that it was absolutely perfect." Alison now said, as she stood next to Mariko with her hands in the pockets of her brown, shortened-waist jacket.

"That it is, and it was real nice o' him too." Logan responded, as Peter went and closed the lid back down on the chest.

"Bobby may not be here, but I do know someone else who just couldn't wait to say 'Hi' to you." Kitty now said, as she felt something, or someone, starting to stir in the bookbag on her shoulder, and she went and pulled the bag off into her hands to unzip it.

"I see you went 'n brought my favorite smokin' buddy with ya, 'Short-Stuff'." Logan replied to Kitty as Lockheed, the winged purple creature that Kitty had rescued some months ago from a government research facility, popped its head out of the bookbag, letting out a small 'snort' as an announcement of his arrival.

Although Logan's comment about Lockheed being his smoking buddy sounded like another one of his jokes to the others, they were unaware that Logan had actually on occasion bummed a light from Lockheed when a match wasn't handy. It was a trick that Logan had secretly taught Kitty's pet when neither she, nor anyone else was looking. Logan had kept it a secret mainly because of Kitty's rather 'vocal' feelings regarding the cigars that he smoked, and assumed that she probably wouldn't look too favorably on his use of Lockheed as a back-up cigarette lighter.

"That's a good boy!" Kitty now said, as Lockheed had been stretching his wings by briefly flying above them around the room, before coming back down into Kitty's arms when she called for him to return to her. Then, Kitty came over to introduce Mariko to her pet dragon, up close and personal.

Which had been something Logan had surprisingly forgotten to mention to his future wife, when he had told her about his and the X-Men's other amazing exploits. One would have expected Mariko to have been, at the very least, thoroughly freaked out by this unusual creature now before her. But, given what she had experienced in her own life, and with everything else that Logan had gone in great lengths to tell her about regarding his own past and about the X-Men, Mariko simply took it in stride as another one of the exceptional circumstances that she had agreed to live with when she accepted Logan's proposal of marriage.

"The two of you seem to have a very strong rapport with one another." Mariko commented, as she had noticed how Lockheed had very obediently listened to Kitty's commands, and now watched as Kitty held Lockheed in her arms and affectionately stroked the back of his neck.

"I know. He usually won't listen too much to anyone else but me, not even this girl at our school who knows how to communicate with animals. So, Dani and everyone else 'hinted' that maybe I should take Lockheed with me, since he would probably like to come see Japan too." Kitty cheerfully replied, as she continued to fondly cradle the miniature purple creature in her arms.

"Well, Lockheed might just be rarin' to go, since he slept most of the way over here, but Ah'm completely beat." Rogue yawned, as she was the next to comment on Lockheed's sudden aerial display. Rogue was not only tired from the jet-lag of jumping over a handful of time zones, but had also helped in shouldering the piloting duties on Blackbird during the flight over to Japan.

"You must all be exhausted from your trip. If you will follow me, I will show you to your rooms so that you may rest." Mariko told the X-Men, as she led most of them out of the living room to the guests' quarters in the compound, which she had instructed her staff to prepare for them.

Left behind in the living room were Logan, Kurt, and Remy in the living room, who wanted to sit up and talk for a while longer, before they also went to turn in for the night.

**………………………………………………………**

Location: _Tokyo, Japan- Shinjuku District_

Unlike the famed Ginza district in Tokyo, which had achieved a more 'tourist-friendly' reputation among those travelers visiting the country, the Shinjuku district was the section of the city where one would come to find the 'real action'. On these packed streets and under the myriad of the bright neon-lights of the Shinjuku, revelers both foreign and domestic journeyed to have a wild-night in its notorious red-light district and on streets that abounded with pachinko parlors, rowdy bars, and numerous love hotels.

It was also for that reason that the Shinjuku district was just as notorious for being the heart of organized-criminal activity. Many members of the Yakuza, the Japanese-mafia, based both their legal and illegal ventures from here, operations that stretched throughout the country and even further out beyond Japan's national borders. But, with the pacts that had allied many of these various families within the notorious Jigoku criminal underworld now left fractured following the arrests and indictments of a number of the Yakuza's top leaders and godfathers, including Keniuchio Harada, the alleged Silver Samurai who was immediately fingered as the ringleader of the Jigoku criminal empire that controlled much of Japan's illicit commerce, a street war for control of these profitable enterprises soon erupted afterwards, and had been raging on in the months since.

But tonight, representatives from the most powerful of those Yakuza factions had gathered together in a small, private room in the back of a popular nightclub in Kabukicho, a meeting that has been convened in an attempt to negotiate a truce between them and to reestablish an understanding that would hopefully halt any further blood from being unnecessarily shed.

Well, at least any more Yakuza blood anyways.

"(What terms are we here to discuss?)" Ichiro said in Japanese, who like most of his counterparts in there was dressed in a dark-colored suit with a flamboyantly-colored shirt and tie, as he stood up at the table that he and more than a half-dozen of the other Yakuza representatives were seated around and brought the meeting to order.

"(You should be the one to tell us. Is it not the head of the Tanaka family that called for this meeting?") Another man in the room responded, as he sat back in his seat.

"(This is nothing more than a ploy to bring us together in one place and to pick us off one by one. But, I will not die so easily or dishonorably, not without a fight!)" A man named Tatsumu shouted, as he stood up from the table in the dimly-lit backroom and drew a 9mm handgun from his suit coat, causing a chain reaction as everyone else in the room also reached into their suit coats' and responded in kind.

"(Put your weapons away, all of you.)" A voice now demanded, as the men in the room suddenly stopped in their tracks. They then turned towards a now opened door to see that a new, unanticipated party had come in to join them.

"(**Madame Hydra**!)" The men exclaimed in unison at this woman, who stood not quite six feet in height entered the room dressed in a green, skin-tight leather outfit, complete with leather wrist-gloves of a lighter green shade and a long, enshrouding green and yellow-trimmed cloak.

The first thing that even a casual observer would notice about Madame Hydra, outside of her mesmerizing seductive looks, would be her bronze-toned skin, haunting light-green eyes, and jet-black hair with exotic emerald-tinted highlights in them, highlights which matched the provocative shade of green lipstick that she was wearing.

And standing right behind Madame Hydra were three HYDRA soldiers drawn from her own elite cadre. All three of them were holding large and very advanced looking machine guns, which appeared to also be equipped with grenade launchers built into them. These soldiers were garbed in HYDRA's traditional green and yellow trimmed uniforms, their faces concealed behind green cowls with red eyeholes, all meant to represent the mythological serpent from which HYDRA drew upon for its namesake.

"(What business does HYDRA have here, involving itself in our affairs?)" Ichiro now stood and asked Madame Hydra, his hand still in his coat ready to draw his handgun at a moment's notice.

"(Because the weapons' shipments and narcotics routes being funneled from China, Madripoor and other areas along the Asian Pacific Rim through Japan, from which HYDRA directly and indirectly benefits from, have been adversely affected by your disruptive squabbling. That is why it is I, who have called for this conference.)" Madame Hydra, who also went by the more descriptive alias of Viper, explained to the Yakuza, "(What better place could there be for my new HYDRA to reclaim its position than in _Nippon_, the land in which it was given birth. In the process I will also help you to restore the Tokyo underworld from its current state of disarray, and back to the prestige and stability that it also once held. Which none of you have seen since Shingen Yashida was firmly in control, and ruled over all of you with an iron fist.)"

"(You dare to be so bold and presumptuous with us! Why should we even listen to you, you who are a foreigner and a woman?)" Tatsumu stood and questioned her, right before he received a swift and very direct answer from Viper.

Viper proceeded to fleetingly and nimbly jump over towards Tatsumu, grabbing him by the collars of his suit coat before he knew what had hit him. She then viciously slammed Tatsumu face-first down onto the large wooden table that he and the other members of the Yakuza had been gathered around.

"(Perhaps you are better able to hear me now!)" Viper replied, as she now pulled a .45 caliber handgun from out of the holster that she had strapped across the small of her back underneath the cape of her cloak, and held it right up against the side of Tatsumu's head.

As the other Yakuza lieutenants saw this occur, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, they instinctively were about to go for their own guns. But they stopped, however, when they heard the 'click-clacking' sound of Viper's soldiers' releasing the safety levers on their machine guns, as they astutely locked and loaded their ammo magazine clips.

After pausing for a moment, Viper once again spoke to the Yakuza gathered around her in this backroom located on the third floor of the nightclub, as she stood over Tatsumu with her weapon still trained up against his temple.

"(Those of you thinking of doing me any harm, should be aware that I also have some of my most skilled marksmen stationed outside on nearby rooftops. So, I wouldn't make any sudden or hostile moves, if I were you.") Viper smirked and revealed to them, as the Yakuza men now realized that she really wasn't bluffing, when a few of the laser-lights from those snipers' rifles outside began to shine in at them through the room's windows.

"(This display may make for incredible showboating, but Tatsumu does have a point Viper. Why should we believe that you are capable of reviving and reorganizing both HYDRA and the Jigoku?)" Ichiro inquired, as he put his gun back into his suit coat, while Viper released Tatsumu up from off of the table and put her own gun back into its holster underneath the cape of her cloak.

"(Nothing will stop me from accomplishing what all of you have seemed so inept and incapable of doing. I will succeed in eliminating Shingen's troublesome daughter, and then returning the Clan Yashida and its vast resources to your fold. And as a show of good faith, I will even freely accept the contract placed on the lives of those other interlopers instrumental in aiding her. Individuals, whom I should point out have managed to shame both you and The Hand, who were formerly in your employ, far worse than that assassin Elektra could have ever hoped to.)" Viper boasted, as a wicked smile came to her face, "(And, I believe that I have the perfect weapon with which to effectively deal with them all.)"

"(If you are truly able to accomplish all that you claim, then perhaps we will listen to further talk of a permanent alliance between us and your new HYDRA.)" Ichiro now replied, as he stood up at the table and more or less spoke for the others in the room.

"(Then, consider it done!)" Viper confidently told them, as she quickly spun back around to exit the room, with her HYDRA soldiers in step right behind her.

But, Viper decided to leave the Yakuza with one last parting gift. With a forceful flick of her wrist, she threw a small knife with a sheet of paper stuck to it through the air, lodging it with precision-skill into a wall that was clear on the other side of the room behind her.

As the Yakuza came over and curiously inspected it, they saw that the folded sheet of paper stuck through the knife was actually an invitation. It was an announcement of the upcoming wedding of Mariko Yashida to the Westerner who had managed to single-handedly defeat the Silver Samurai, complete with a color photograph of the bride and groom inside of it. As the Yakuza looked more closely at the invitation, they also noticed that the dagger, which Viper had thrown across the room and planted the wedding invitation into the wall with, had been unmistakably put right through the groom's heart.

**……………………………………..……**

As the first rays of a new rising sun signaled the beginning of new day at the Yashida ancestral compound in Agarashima, some of the guests staying there were already up at this relatively early hour, despite their lengthy journey and fairly late-hour arrival the night before. Although, one of those individuals' had wound up receiving a little extra help in that department, which had come in the form of a small, purple winged lizard that had decided to serve as her own personal alarm clock.

Kitty was in her guest bedroom currently sitting on top of a square _zabuton_ pillow at a short _kotatsu_ table in the room's center, a table that barely measured a foot and a half in height up from the floor. She had her legs crossed over in front of her beneath the table, as she watched a recently released DVD movie on her laptop computer that was sitting on top of the short rectangular table. But, Kitty wasn't the only one currently engrossed in the film. The new friend that had awoken her just a few hours prior also sat and watched the film very eagerly with her, having wanted to finish a lesson that they had begun together a number of weeks beforehand.

"_Yaawwwnnn_…"

"I'll bet you're sleepy, especially since you were up roamin' around here before the sun came up." Kitty replied, as Lockheed sat nearby on top of the short table and attentively watched Star Wars-Episode III with her, "Then again, you surprised me when you slept the whole plane ride over here, so I guess the joke's on me then, huh boy?"

Since Star Wars was something of a semi-obsession for her, Kitty had taken it upon herself to familiarize Lockheed with the movies and with the other related stories that she loved so much. But, Kitty was fairly amazed when Lockheed also seemed to develop a genuine interest in her favorite movie franchise as well, to the point where he actually paid close attention to what was going on when they were watching the previous five movies from the original and prequel trilogies together. And even though Kitty, who unlike Lockheed, had seen this final chapter a number of times during the summer while it was still in the theatres, both she and Lockheed were nonetheless riveted and mesmerized as this tragic tale unfolded before them.

"Coooo…" Lockheed muttered, as he lay on his belly on top of the table, looking up at the laptop's monitor screen in front of him and then over at Kitty, who was sitting there dressed in a plain white sweatshirt and dark-colored sweatpants.

"Yeah. I guess if the guy I loved suddenly turned on all of his friends and became super-evil, then I'd probably wanna die too." Kitty tenderly replied to her pet dragon's empathetic murmur, as she sat close by and gently stroked Lockheed across his neck, sides, and dorsum while the movie quickly drew towards its conclusion.

But right then, the relative serenity of their moment together was loudly and very vocally interrupted.

"**Kitty**! We've gotta talk, and talk now, about respectin' other people's property!" Jubilee now yelled from the hallway, as she stood right outside of Kitty's room.

Wondering what had happened to get the usually easy-going and very laid-back Jubilee so upset, Kitty got up and hurried over to the sliding door to find out what was going on.

"You don't have to go and throw a hissy. I'll give you your Vines and Rogue's Big and Rich CD's back before we leave for Tokyo tomorrow." Kitty was saying as she came over to open the sliding shoji screen door, which was screened in with thick rice paper and provided only a little more than a modicum of privacy.

Once she opened the door, Kitty saw Jubilee standing there dressed in one of the long white, cotton _yukata_ house robes that had been left in their rooms by Mariko's staff. But to Kitty's surprise, Jubilee was holding in her right hand what appeared to be a navy-blue and white-print sweater and skirt combo set. Or rather, the burnt remains of said outfit ensemble.

"Um, you tryin' to make some kinda fashion statement with that?" Kitty inquired with a slight smirk, as the two girls stood at the doorway.

"No, more like showin' you that you need to keep Puff over there on a tighter leash!" Jubilee replied, as she stepped past Kitty into the bedroom and held the singed material up in front of her, "Just look at it, he munched and torched my new outfit into oblivion. It's totally ruined!"

"Lockheed, is that true? Did you do that?" Kitty now turned back around and demandingly asked of the creature, who was by now standing up on all four claws on top of the table.

"Of course it was him! What, do you think I like got up in the middle of the night, snuck into my own room with a lighter, and suddenly went crazy and decided to start burnin' up my own wardrobe with it? That's Pyro's schtick, not mine." Jubilee told Kitty, as they both stood and looked at the dragon and then once again at his handiwork, which Jubilee now handed over to Kitty for her to get a closer look at.

"Shame on you Lockheed, you know better than this. I've told you that you can't go around messin' up other people's things." Kitty came over to the kotatsu table and looked down at her dragon, as she now scolded him and held the damaged clothing for him to get a good look at. But, Lockheed's only response was to put his head back down on the table, and to cover his eyes with both of his tiny paws at her reprimand.

"Besides, I thought we were cool. I taught you that whole marshmallow-roastin' trick, and we stayed up makin' smores together. I mean, that's almost like blood-bond right there." Jubilee now came over and also spoke to Lockheed.

"I think Lockheed's really sorry about it, and I'm sure he won't do it again. But, I guess if you didn't have such great tastes in clothes, maybe it wouldn't have been so tempting to him." Kitty now humorously said to Jubilee, as she laid the ruined outfit down on the table and tried to lighten the mood in the room a little, all the while Lockheed still sat remorsefully with his head covered on the table.

Jubilee had been around the miniature dragon long enough to tell from his current mannerisms that Kitty was right, and that Lockheed was indeed sorry. And, now that she had had the chance to calm down considerably, Jubilee decided to be the one to extend a peace offering to him.

"Well, since your owner's sooo fashion-impaired, I guess it's up to me to teach you that having great taste in clothes, doesn't automatically make them tasty. C'mon, I think everyone else's already heading down for breakfast, and I'll even give you a free ride down there." Jubilee grinned, as she held her arm down in an invitational position towards Lockheed.

And Lockheed immediately accepted, as the winged creature sprang up from the table and flew over to Jubilee, landing on her arm and scurrying up the sleeve of her robe to perch himself up across her left shoulder.

"I think it's great how you two can kiss 'n make up so gosh-darn quickly." Kitty now teased them, as she went over and turned her laptop off, before she, Jubilee, and Lockheed started out of the bedroom together.

"See, I'm not about holdin' grudges, not over a sweater anyways. But, if Lockheed ever goes and touches my favorite yellow jacket, there won't be any hugs or smoochees 'tween us, 'cause then it really will be on." Jubilee smiled in response, as she turned her head back slightly to look at the purple dragon on her shoulder, lightly tapping him on the nose with a single finger to emphasize her point.

Meanwhile, the trio continued on down the hallway together, walking past the other bedrooms in the guests' wing of the compound, as they headed for the castle's grandiose dining hall.

**……………………………………………**

Elsewhere within the confines of the fortress's tall and protective outer walls, right across from the estate's huge and artfully-designed garden sat the Yashida family _dojo_, at the end of a long and narrow cobblestone walkway. Logan had been up for a few hours already going through his daily workout regimen, which began with a five mile run in the woods surrounding the estate, and now continued inside of this dusky and venerable gymnasium. On a large and empty mat in the dojo's center Logan was now practicing _kata_, the basic movements essential to many of the numerous martial-arts disciplines. And while on the surface it would appear that the purpose of Logan's training session was to simply improve on his already formidable fighting skills, which was a department that Logan was certainly not lacking in, in this case appearances could also be deceiving.

The truth of the matter was that these solitary workouts, where Logan toiled through set after grueling set of these fluid and predefined movements, provided him with a source of deep meditative relaxation. It brought to him a greater sense of focus in his daily life, a respite that Logan had sought ever since his mind, his body, his very life, had been torn asunder and rebuilt by Colonel Stryker and the Weapon X program.

But, while these calming workout sessions had helped to give him a greater sense of control over the animal instincts that he constantly struggled with internally, there was also another and far more important reason why Logan felt so at peace with himself these days, a reason that happened to have just walked in through the dojo's entrance.

"Logan-chan, everyone is gathering for breakfast." Mariko now said, as she announced her presence to him.

Mariko came into the dojo wearing a cream-colored turtleneck sweater, with a dark brown and pink plaid knee-length skirt, a pair of matching brown boots that came up to just below her knee, and had her lengthy jet-black hair now tied back into a long ponytail with a single pink ribbon.

"You coulda just sent someone to tell me, instead o' walkin' all the way out here." Logan replied, as he finished working through a final set of thrusting punches, before turning to face Mariko. Having earlier removed his white muscle shirt as a result of his strenuous workout, the various parts of Logan's well-defined upper body were now on display for Mariko's benefit.

"Since you had already gotten up for your morning workout by the time I awoke, I chose to deliver this message myself. I wanted to tell you good morning, away from the prying eyes of others." Mariko smiled, as she walked over to Logan and handed him his shirt, which had been laying on the floor close by.

"In that case, a good mornin' it is darlin'." Logan replied, as he took the shirt from her hands and put it on, and then romantically took Mariko into his arms.

As Logan and Mariko became wrapped up together in a warm and tender embrace, they began to passionately and sensually kiss one another, showing just how tremendously deep the love that they shared ran. And, once their extended and sultry exchange had ended, Logan stood there with Mariko still in his arms and gazed intensely into her eyes for a moment, before he spoke again.

"Guess I'd better go hit the showers, so I can hurry up and catch up with you and the rest of the gang. That is, of course, unless you'd care to tag along and join me?" Logan smirked and told her, as he had both of his hands planted firmly around her waist, right above her shapely hips.

"I don't believe that we will have enough time for that, especially if we do not wish to keep our friends' waiting for breakfast well into the afternoon." Mariko smiled and wryly replied, as she reached up to kiss Logan once again and pressed her right hand up against his rippling chest, "Besides, I promised to give them a formal tour of my family's home, and explain to them its remarkable history and the significance of the numerous artifacts now kept here. And, I had intended to be done with that before Leyu arrived later this afternoon."

"Yeah, I think it'll be a nice change o' pace for her havin' some other kids to hang out with around here that're more her own age." Logan stated in reference to Leyu Yoshida, who was Mariko's younger teenaged cousin that had come to visit and stay with them a number of times over the preceding months, "Anyways, I'll see all o' you in a little bit, M'iko."

As Logan turned around and walked towards the dojo's doorway to make his exit, Mariko stood there entranced by his every step. She smiled and thought to herself just how lucky she was to have met such a loving and honorable man in Logan, one who had managed to make her so incredibly happy. And, as she and Logan were soon to be husband and wife, the intense exhilaration that Mariko felt was such that she hoped it would last them for the rest of their days together.

**…………………………………………………**

Location: _The Northern Swiss Alps, outside of La Brévine, Switzerland_

In this remote and fairly isolated mountain region a HYDRA hovercraft, the insurgent organizations' own sleek and ultra-fast answer to Stark Enterprises' recently-developed Quinjets, silently made its vertical three-point landing in this snow-covered environment. And as the aircraft's cockpit hatch opened, a lone cloaked-figure quickly emerged from the vessel and agilely leapt out into this frozen locale on this overcast afternoon.

Immediately, she quickly and stealthily made her way over a small snow-embankment in front of her, heading towards a secluded mountain chalet on its other side and all the while preparing herself for a fateful meeting with the individual who currently resided within.

As Viper now made it to the small cottage's front door and went to turn its doorknob, which had unexpectedly been left unlocked, she proceeded to slowly enter into this humble abode. Once inside, Viper saw that most of the lights were off, with the fire currently going in the home's open fireplace providing the main source of light in the living room. But, after taking just a few steps into the hidden-away residence, Viper suddenly realized that her arrival had not gone unnoticed, as the home's owner had been observing her the entire time through one of the living room's small front windows.

"I see that your years of exhaustive training have kept you as sharp as ever. Enough so, that you were able to sense the approach of an aircraft designed to evade even SHIELD's most sophisticated radar equipment." Viper told her, as she ventured further into the chalet's entryway and closed the front door behind her.

But the blonde woman, who was wearing a maroon and charcoal microfleece sweater outfit, just stood there over in front of the window and made no reply whatsoever to Viper's comment.

At least not at first.

"I don't believe you knocked." The woman slowly articulated, as she finally delivered a response to Viper after a moment of silence between them, while she continued staring out of the window and leaned forward against its small interior ledge, "And I certainly don't recall inviting you inside."

"I took that as a mere oversight on your part. Particularly considering, that at one time this served as one of my own personal safe houses'." Viper replied, as she walked over towards a hi-leg lounger chair that sat away from the front door towards the center of the living room, "I have an important assignment for you."

As she went to sit down in the lounger, Viper noticed on the rectangular coffee table in front of her that there were a number of news articles and magazine covers scattered all over it. All of them featured interviews with the world's latest media's darlings, the much-publicized super-powered group known as The Fantastic Four.

"An opportunity for us to stake a firm foothold in the Asian Pacific Rim has presented itself, one which will in turn provide me with a sufficient powerbase to then overtake and consolidate HYDRA's other divided factions. Once I have placed them completely under my direct control, I will return us to a state of preeminence not seen since the days of Strucker's original _HYDRA Bruderschaft_." Viper sat and continued, "And to guarantee my ascension to the new Supreme Hydra, I will once again need you at my side, Lady Hydra."

"**I have a name, and it sure as hell isn't Lady Hydra**!" The woman furiously replied, as she now turned around from the window. The ferocious intensity of the glare from her cold blue eyes seemed as though it could burn a hole right through Viper, who sat just a few feet away from her.

"I thought that your days as Captain Carol Danvers, former CIA-operative and NASA security officer were long since behind you." Viper scoffed and tauntingly inquired of Carol.

"No thanks to all of you!" Carol loudly and angrily replied, as she now started over towards Viper with both of her hands balled up into a fist, "I told you that I was finished with you and HYDRA, when I finally came to my senses after our last battle with Captain America."

"Never forget that it was HYDRA that found and rescued you, after your own government nearly destroyed you. We took you in and healed your fractured mind and shattered memories. It is I who made you whole again!" Viper asserted, as she quickly stood back up to face Carol, "And now, I believe the time has come for the Marvelous Lady to once again awaken."

With those very specific words, a glazed-over look washed across Carol's face, as the post-hypnotic suggestion that had been implanted and buried deep within her mind was once again reactivated. Gone was Carol Susan Jane Danvers, the woman who had been born to Joseph and Marie Danvers in Boston, Massachusetts, who had been raised to patriotically believe in the principles of a free and democratic society, and who would later join the United States Air Force right after her eighteenth birthday to dedicate herself to upholding those very ideals. In her place now stood Lady Hydra, nigh invulnerable powerhouse and wanted international terrorist whose sole purpose was to serve in furthering HYDRA's ambitions of global domination.

Viper and HYDRA were second to none when it came to mastery in the field of thought manipulation, using sensory-deprivation, mind-altering toxins, and various other technologically advanced brain-washing techniques to accomplish their desired end of completely remolding the psyche of their intended target. It would even seem that they had nearly elevated this reconditioning process to the level of an art-form, as evidenced by Carol's instant, albeit unwilling, return to her villainous alter-ego.

"This is your target, I want these two eliminated." Viper now said, as she came over and pulled a photograph of Logan and Mariko from a dossier envelope that she had brought with her, and handed it to Lady Hydra.

But, Lady Hydra merely looked at the photograph, as her entire body began to levitate more than a foot off of the floor thanks to the super-human abilities that she had accidentally received years beforehand. Then, she responded to Viper.

"So, have you commanded Madame Hydra, and so it shall be done. **Hail HYDRA**!" Lady Hydra vocally reaffirmed her loyalty to Viper and to orders that she had just been given, as she continued to steadily float in the air, crumpling the photograph in her right hand in her iron-tight grip.

Meanwhile, Madame Hydra stood next to Lady Hydra and looked up at her with an extremely satisfied expression on her face. Especially, now that she had gotten her most dangerous weapon once again back at her disposal to help her take on HYDRA's greatest enemies. And it would also seem, to unleash her against a certain individual with whom Viper felt that she had an old score to settle.

**……………………………………………………**

Next Chapter: Oh, what a night…


	2. In the Air Tonight

Land of the Silver Sun pt. II

Written by Darkstorm5000

Disclaimer: The X-Men and related characters in their various incarnations are the property of Marvel Comics and Marvel Enterprises.

**…………………………………………**

Part 2- In the Air Tonight

Location: _Yokohama, Japan_

Less than thirty minutes south of Tokyo sits the city of Yokohama, which is perhaps the nation's largest and most important port city, both in terms of its economic significance and in terms of its historical value. And in the area surrounding the _Shin-Yokohama_ train station within the city, which serves as one of its two central railway hubs, sits one of Yokohama's main shopping districts. The streets here are lined and teeming with various shops and department stores, all with the purpose of serving the needs of its workers that commute to and from Tokyo, as well as to attract the assorted interests of those tourists that happened to pass through.

Which was the case when it came to a small group of young ladies, who were currently sitting and talking at a table together inside of a small _Shokudo_ restaurant located on one of those aforementioned streets.

"It's been pretty nice getting to spend the whole day to ourselves, just walking around shopping and taking in the sights." Kitty Pryde was the first to say to her companions at their table, as she sat with her pink cropped-jacket on the back of her seat, revealing the purple long-sleeved top that she had on underneath.

"Yeah, especially the shopping part." Jubilee happily said next, as she sat with a couple of shopping bags from one of Yokohama's major department stores on the floor next to her chair, wearing her own brownish-gold jacket that she only had zipped up about halfway.

"Ah'm sure you did, since Kitty treated you to a mini-shopping spree. What brought that on anyways?" Rogue now inquired, as she sat with her dark-green leather jacket draped across her lap, and lightly tapped her finger on the table next to a disposable plastic tray in front of her. Rogue had on her hands a pair of black cotton gloves, which were slightly thicker than the nylon ones that she usually wore during most of the year.

"Because, Kitty majorly owed me." Jubilee smiled, as she looked in Kitty's direction, referring to the blue outfit that Lockheed had destroyed the day before.

Then, Jubilee turned her attention to the fourth person seated at the table with them.

"And, now that I'm finished with my fashionista-fest for the day, where're we off to next?"

"If you would like, I can take you and introduce you to Taichi. He doesn't live very far from here." Leyu Yoshida replied to Jubilee, as she had been acting as a sort of informal tour guide for Kitty, Rogue, and Jubilee by showing them around the city today.

Leyu was sitting there with the girls' wearing her own black and red mesh nylon jacket, which was cut in a tight-fitting style. Leyu had a basic red t-shirt on underneath her jacket, had on a pair of black denim pants, and a pair of black twin-buckle boots, which were eerily similar in appearance to the ones that Rogue had on. And to complete her unique look, Leyu had her shoulder-length, raven-hued hair tinted with medium-brown highlights in it.

"So, do I totally detect a romantic rendezvous in the works?" The curiously inquisitive Jubilee unabashedly asked Leyu, as she sat with her elbow up on the table and had her face resting against her palm.

"No, Taichi is just a friend." Leyu blushed and giggled in response, "We actually met last year at a race in Tokyo, and we've been sending each other e-mails ever since. We like to talk about anything that has to do with racing, and we let each other know when major races in the area are coming up. And, he's one of the few guys I know that doesn't think it's weird to hang out with a girl who's so interested in street-racing."

"Is he a racer like those other guys you were telling us about?" Rogue asked her, as Leyu had been filling the girls in about her love of street-racing, which was an extremely popular sub-culture amongst Japanese youths, much like in America.

"Yes, he belongs to a team here in Yokohama, and he drives this really nice Fairlady 300ZX. They race mostly around Yokohama and Tokyo, but sometimes they travel to other areas to race teams from other provinces as well." Leyu gladly and enthusiastically explained to them, "If we have enough time before all of you leave, perhaps I can take you out one night to watch some of the drift races that take place not too far from Agarashima. The best ones are usually out at Usui Pass and on Mount Akina, and some of those racers there are unreal. You just have to see them to believe some of the things that they can do."

"Well, we won't be going anywhere, not if we spend the rest of the day sitting in here and piggin' out." Kitty said, referring to the new local cuisines that Leyu had been introducing her, Rogue, and Jubilee to and that they had been sampling in this family-owned Shokudo restaurant, which included various dishes that consisted of tofu, curry rice, sushi, and noodles.

With Kitty's cue now given, all four girls stood up from their table, put their coats back on, and prepared to make their leave from the restaurant. Once they were back outside, Rogue looked down at her wristwatch, which she had already adjusted to the local time zone.

"Where're Remy and Peter at?" Jubilee now asked out loud, as she and the rest of the group stood on the sidewalk out in front of the restaurant.

"All Remy said to me was somethin' about needin' to go find some kinda special souvenir, and then he took off draggin' Peter along with him." Rogue responded turning her head to her left and then to her right, as she to look up and down the crowded and bustling street, but saw no sign of either Peter or Remy anywhere on it, "Ah woulda figured they'd been back long before now, since he said they'd just be gone a few minutes."

"Aannnd a whole hour and a half later…" Jubilee sarcastically remarked, as she feigned looking down at an imaginary watch on her own wrist while slowly making her comment.

"I guess you can't really blame the guys for going and getting lost somewhere. I'm sure shopping for girls' clothes was probably the last thing on either of their minds today." Kitty said in response, as she was the last to come out of the restaurant and the girls' then began to walk up the street a little, backtracking towards the rail station where they had originally arrived into the city at.

"Perhaps, they really are lost?" Leyu now interjected with her own speculation, when she took into consideration just how big of a city that Yokohama really was.

"Ah doubt it." Rogue now tersely said, as she stopped on the sidewalk and folded her arms over in front of her, while other people continued to pass by them on the semi-crowded walkway, "Remy knows his way around any big city better 'n most folks know the backa their own hand. Plus, we told them we'd meet up back here when we got through shoppin', so Ah'm sure wherever Remy's at right now, it's exactly where he wants to be."

But, just as Rogue finished her last sentence, the unexpected sensation of someone rushing up right behind her and then wrapping their arms tightly around her waist, as they forcefully pulled her back towards them, startled and caught her completely off-guard.

"Now, if you ain't speakin' de truth, _Mon Ange_." Rogue now heard a smoothly seductive voice whisper into her ear. And just by his brazen words, Rogue rolled her eyes as she immediately knew who these arms firmly wrapped around her body belonged to.

"You're just lucky this time the combat instincts Logan taught me didn't kick in a second sooner, else you woulda been on the receiving end of one heckuva cross-body shoulder toss." Rogue happily stated, as she cocked her head back slightly to now see Remy standing right behind her.

"Dat why you 'n de 'wild man' spent so much time trainin' together, just t'come up wit' new ways o' hurtin' _moi_?" Remy Lebeau smirked and humorously replied, as he continued standing behind Rogue with his arms affectionately around her waist.

"Actually, he taught all us girls' a buncha self-defense techniques, meant to drop any yahoo to their knees faster than you can blink. If, you know what Ah mean." Rogue said with a small smile now on her face, as she turned to look back over her right shoulder and saw Remy standing there with his red on black eyes carefully concealed behind a stylish pair shades, and his customary long brown trench coat tied tightly around his own waist, "So, Ah guess you'd better keep that in mind, next time you think it'll be funny to sneak up behind one of us, _Sugah_."

"Not anymore, least not wit'out a cup on anyways." Remy shook his head and laughed, as Rogue now gently rubbed her own gloved hands massagingly over his, his fingers still clasped together just below her naval region.

"So, did you find whatever it was you two went lookin' for?" Kitty now asked Peter, as he was the last to finally rejoin the group.

While Remy had seconds earlier stealthily took off through the throng of people on the sidewalk so that he could come up and surprise Rogue, Peter had simply continued on with his leisurely stroll alongside the curb heading towards them.

"That you will have to ask Remy, _Katya_. Since, I still have no idea what it is that we were looking for in the first place." Peter Rasputin replied, as he came up to Kitty wearing his traditional Russian-style winter coat, which was made of dark brown suede and had fur-trimmed lining in it. Peter then bent down a little, so that he and Kitty could exchange a very brief kiss on the lips in front of the restaurant.

"Yeah, where is this big souvenir you just had to run off and go get anyways?" Rogue now asked Remy, as she pulled away from their embrace and turned all the way around to face him.

"Never said anyt'ing 'bout it bein' big, now did I?" Remy playfully responded and pointed out to her.

"Just the same, Ah'm still curious to see exactly what it is." Rogue told him, as she now stood with her hands on her hips.

"Don't worry, all good t'ings come t'those dat wait. 'Sides, you know what they say 'bout patience, 'bout it bein' a virtue." Remy smiled and mysteriously said to Rogue, as he continued to string her along in anticipation.

"And since when do you know the first thing about virtues?" Rogue laughed and scathingly replied, as she raised an eyebrow while they continued their verbal exchange.

"Um, not that I'm not standin' here and totally enjoyin' the latest episode of your on-goin' reality-drama 'Southern couple fightin' in public', but we've got a train to catch." Jubilee said, as she was the one who, surprisingly, reminded them that they had a subway train to go catch. Jube then turned to look back at Leyu, who was standing there with them and had her cell-phone up to her ear, most likely calling her friend Taichi to see where he wanted to meet up with them at.

But, in addition to meeting Leyu's friend, these six individuals also had to hurry before it would be time for them to catch up with Scott and Alison, so that they could all head back into Tokyo for the evening's specially-planned festivities. With Jubilee's reminder, the group then began to move out and venture down the street, now on their way to the main terminal that would take them down into one of the Shin-Yokohama district's subway platforms.

But just halfway down the street from the restaurant, the group's journey abruptly stopped when they all came to a screeching halt. Or rather, when Remy suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, and caused everyone else in their party to also do the same.

"What's the matter?" Rogue now asked Remy, as the couple had been walking together hand-in-hand, when Remy's unanticipated hesitation caused her to jerk to a standstill along with him.

"I…I just got a strange feelin'. Like we was bein' watched, or somethin'." Remy now said to Rogue and the others in a very serious and uneasy tone, which was something rarely heard from him. Remy then began to look on the street all around them, and then gazed up to visually scan the rooftops of the high-rise buildings up above.

"Um, Ah think you're just bein' paranoid. Think about it, we're a buncha foreign tourists here on a busy street, Ah'm sure that more than a few casual stares should be expected." Rogue tried to reassuringly tell Remy, as she stood to his right on the sidewalk and caressingly pressed her hand up against his side. But, Rogue could also see that Remy's notion about being watched was truly troubling him, as he continued to solemnly observe his surroundings in an attempt to discover something, or someone, close by that was out of the ordinary.

"Yeah…yeah, I guess yo' right, _Cheré_." Remy replied in agreement, as he now turned his attention away from his intense examination of their surroundings, and back towards her.

But, Remy's statement to Rogue not withstanding, whether it was due to his mutant powers, or just because of the natural instincts that he had developed over a lifetime spent being trained by and then working for the Thieves Guild, Remy's senses were sharpened to the point where he instantly knew when a situation just didn't feel right, and when something was out of sorts. In addition, Remy's training also made it difficult for him to shake the feeling that they were being tailed by someone, and by an obvious professional at that.

But, as Remy's eerie suspicions continued to plague him internally, both he and the rest of the group in the meantime had once again started down the avenue heading towards the subway terminal. That is, until their trek was once again unexpectedly interrupted, this time when Jubilee let out an unnervingly loud shriek.

"**Guys**!" Jubilee ear-splittingly shouted.

"Jubes, what's wrong?" Rogue asked her friend, after hearing her outburst.

"You gotta check that out!" Jubilee animatedly told them, as she gawkingly pointed down towards the end of the block that they were all on.

As they continued forward and drew closer to the small shop that Jubilee had pointed out to them, the group soon saw what had her so keyed up. They all looked up to see a single word lit up in huge neon lettering right above the store's huge front window of, which said it all.

"Condomporium." Leyu articulated out loud for them, as she had finished her conversation with Taichi by this point. But for the life of her, Leyu couldn't understand why Jubilee would be so excited just to see a store that sold male contraceptives.

"Definitely can't remember seein' nothin' like dis back home. Still, you can't make no mistake about where t'go, if you need t'get some of these kinda party favors." Remy was the next to remark with a slight smirk, as they all looked at the store's main front window, which had a painted cartoon logo of a dancing condom on it, which told you in no uncertain terms exactly what it was that was sold there.

"That's for sure. If my Mama was here, Ah'm sure she'd probably be droppin' dead of embarrassment right about now." Rogue also remarked, as she took out a small digital camera from her purse, which she had been using to snap photos of the local sights so that she could show them to the other students back home in Westchester.

After Rogue took a couple of pictures of the condom store, and of a few other local buildings close by, the group then continued on their way.

All, except for Kitty.

As everyone else moved on, unnoticed to them Kitty remained standing there, as she stared up at the store's front window very seriously, doing so in an almost contemplative fashion.

"_Katya_, is everything okay?" Peter now asked Kitty, as the massively towering young man had come back up the sidewalk for his comparatively diminutive girlfriend, after he had taken a few steps with the others and then quickly realized that she wasn't with them.

"Yeah, I just got lost in a train of thought there for a minute." Kitty replied, as she looked up and flashed Peter, with what in all honesty was, a somewhat uneasy smile on her face.

Kitty then placed her hand into Peter's much larger one, and the two rushed along the sidewalk together to catch up with the others, who were already a number of yards ahead of them.

**………………………………..………………**

In the _Minato Mirai 21_ harbor district of Yokohama sits the magnificently prominent skyscraper known as the _Yokohama Landmark Tower_. At over 70 stories in height, the Tower maintains the distinction of being one of the tallest buildings in all of Japan. And for the visitors who dared to travel up to the Landmark Tower's indoor observation-platform on its 69th floor, doing so via the world's fastest elevator, they were treated to a panoramic, 360-degree birdseye view of Yokohama Bay, all of Yokohama city, and to outlying areas beyond.

"Everything looks pretty amazing from up here, doesn't it? Scott Summers commented, as he looked out across the city and past Yokohama Bay, where out on the horizon a fairly visibleMount Fuji could still be seen, although its summit remained obscured in a small blanket clouds.

"It's just as breath-taking now as it was last time I saw it." Alison Blaire replied, as she and Scott stood up against the railing of the beautiful indoor 'Sky Garden' observation deck, the couple looking out together onto the huge earthen mound far off in the distance.

"Last time?" Scott now inquired of Alison, as he turned to his left and took in the sight of the stunningly buxom-blonde standing there at his side.

Visually inspecting her Scott looked at Alison, who was dressed in a brown leather jacket with a shortened waist, wearing it over a slightly revealing Athena-cut sports top in a medium-blue and yellow paisley-print, accessorized with form-fitting blue pants that managed to carefully cling to her every curve.

"Yeah, I have been to Japan before." Ali replied to Scott's question, as she looked up into his eyes, which were always mysteriously shrouded behind ruby-red lenses, "The first time, I was here a couple of years ago and I played a sold out Tokyo Dome. And on my last world tour, I toured throughout the country and performed at the Osaka Dome, here at Yokohama International Stadium, and I finally got to play the _Budokan_ too."

"My mistake. I forgot about how you used to really get around." Scott humorously said to her, as he took out a map from the back pocket of his olive-colored pants and opened it. It was a map that he had purchased earlier in the day, when he and Alison had been passing the day by milling through the spacious and sprawling shopping center located in the Landmark Tower's lower-levels.

"Used to? Hanging out with you X-Men, I'm still getting around pretty good these days." Alison smiled and replied, since she and Scott were more or less off by themselves on the observation deck, and out of earshot from any of the other tourists in the Sky Garden area, "Not that I mind, of course. Especially, since I don't think I could sell out a sandbox considering my career's pretty much dead and buried now."

Alison was referring to the much-publicized fall out, which occurred following the revelation a few months ago that she was, in fact, a mutant. It had been a secret that Alison had struggled to hide from the rest of the world ever since she was a teenager, and once that information was finally disclosed to the public, she watched as her worst fears came true. Many of Alison's fans immediately and angrily turned against her, and her own record label promptly dumped her in the ensuing media melee. And she wound up becoming the latest target of anti-mutant hate groups, who were determined not to let her music 'corrupt' their children, accusing that her songs were fraught full of hidden pro-mutant propaganda.

As Alison thought about this and the other recent changes in her life, which included her having fortuitously met the X-Men at a time when she was probably at the lowest point in her life, and her now blossoming romance with Scott, she did so while gazing out onto Yokohama's bustling city and harbor-port below.

"You said you played at Yokohama International Stadium, right?" Scott now asked Alison after a few moments of silence between them, as he looked down at the map in his hands.

"Uh-huh." Alison replied in a somewhat detached tone, as she was still caught up in her own private musings, while she stared out of the huge observation window in front of them.

"Well, I've been looking on this map, but I don't see it anywhere." Scott told her, as he had been scanning the map thoroughly.

"You can't miss it, it's that huge arena right over there." Ali said, as she pointed out through the window across the city towards a sizable structure due north of them, "It's not too far from where we arrived and left the kids' to shop."

Then, Alison came over and put her right hand on the sleeve of Scott's dark-brown bomber jacket, as she leaned over in front of him and looked down at the map with him.

"See, here it is. Except, now it's called Nissan Stadium." Alison further clarified for Scott, as she stood very close and found the structure on the map for him.

"Oh, I see it now." Scott told her, as he turned his attention away from the map and held it down at his side, choosing instead to focus on Alison's almost crystal-blue eyes that were now looking up at him.

"Wonder what you'd do, if you didn't have me to help you out with the little things in life, 'Leader-Man'?" Alison cheerfully and playfully queried Scott, as she moved her right hand down the sleeve of his jacket, interlacing her fingers over, and then in between his, before she looked up and beamed a smile up at Scott that could have easily lit up the entire observation room, and done so without any aid from her own illuminating mutant abilities.

"Well, I'm not ready to find that out just yet." Scott replied, as he put his other arm around Alison's waist, and the two were then quickly immersed in a deep and passionate kiss. Scott and Alison's amorous display lasted for a few moments, before the couple turned back to look out onto the city for awhile longer, their hands still tenderly clasped together.

After another half-hour had passed, Scott and Alison took notice of the afternoon hour and decided it was time to leave the Landmark Tower. They wanted to tour some more of the Minato Mirai district, before it would be time for them to leave for Tokyo. But, as they were preparing to leave the Sky Garden observation deck, Scott and Alison were surprised when a small group of teenaged Japanese girls', who had been silently observing the couple from afar, now stopped them just as they were about to walk through the exit that led to the elevator area.

"(You are Alison Blaire?)" One of the girls in the group asked her in Japanese, as she was volunteered by the other six girls' to inquire. The other girls' were standing in an informal semi-circle around Scott and Alison, with a few of them bashfully giggling.

These girls were all dressed in _seifukus_, which were the customary sailor-styled uniform worn by most school-aged girls in Japan. Each of their outfits consisted of a navy-blue middy blouse and skirt outfit, with a pair of knee-high white socks and white sneakers or black loafers.

"Yeah." Alison nodded her head in confirmation and apprehensively replied, since she only knew a little bit of Japanese and just did manage to recognize the girl saying her name.

And, given how the merest mention of her name had seemed to spark such intense public outrage and hostility towards her back home in recent months, Alison was understandably leery of why someone, who obviously recognized who she was, would even bother to approach her.

"(Would you mind posing for a picture with us?)" Another one of the girls' smiled and further asked Alison, as she held a digital camera up in her hands and gestured to Alison with it.

As an active X-Man, Scott had the benefit of receiving crash-courses in foreign languages from Professor Xavier, and instantly understood what the girls' were requesting. They went on to explain to Scott that Alison was one of their favorite American singers, and that they were in Yokohama for a one-day fieldtrip excursion with their school. So, they wanted to have a photo as a keepsake of their trip, and to prove to the other students from their school that they really had seen Alison here.

Once Scott finished translating things for Alison, she immediately and graciously agreed to pose for the snapshot with them. As the student who was holding the camera handed it over to another man to take the picture for them, a man who himself was also a tourist from _Kyoto_, Alison reached over to pull Scott to her side.

"Say cheese." Alison turned and said to Scott, as he had been unexpectedly inserted into this photo-op.

"You're the celebrity, not me. I really don't think these girls' are interested in taking my picture." Scott remarked to her, as Alison hooked her left arm through his.

"Well, since you're the one who convinced me that I didn't need to wear a disguise in public anymore, back on that day when we went car-shopping, then you might as well get used to the idea of having your profile captured on film with your girlfriend too." Alison good-naturedly ribbed Scott, as she smiled and turned back to face her photographer.

Alison then lightly placed her right hand up on the shoulder of one of the girls' standing in front of her, the one who had come up and asked her for the photo in the first place, right before the flash of the camera went off.

**………………………………………………**

Location: _Tokyo, Japan- Meguro District_

On the top floor of the _Omonaru_ high-rise building in this middle-upper class section of downtown Tokyo, sits the penthouse suite belonging to the Clan Yashida. More specifically, it is the penthouse belonging to Lady Mariko Yashida, and as the Head of the Clan it is where stays whenever she's in town. And, as her official consort and now soon-to-be husband, it was also the Tokyo residence of Logan, where he and Kurt Wagner currently found themselves.

Logan was at the moment sitting in the spacious living room of the penthouse watching its enormous wide-screen television, as he had been awaiting his friend's return to the room. Kurt had a short time prior told Logan that there was something that he had brought along on his trip and now wanted to show him, right before the blue-skinned mutant disappeared in a cloud of smoke that teleported him to his guest room on that same floor.

"Kurt, what the hell are ya doin' back there?" Logan said aloud, as the man not very well-known for his patience, was growing more and more curious by the minute about whatever it was that Kurt had gone to get.

"I will be right there. I just wanted to make sure that everything was in place, before I made my new debut for you." Kurt replied, as Logan heard him walking back into the living room, "So tell me, how do you like my new look?"

But, while he had heard Kurt's heavily-accented German voice announcing his return, upon first sight the man now standing before Logan certainly didn't look like Kurt, at least not the one that he was used to seeing.

"You like fine. But, you got me wonderin' how you snuck somebody from one o' those TV makeover shows in here without my senses pickin' up on it?" Logan replied, as he stood up from the sofa that he was seated in and walked over towards Kurt.

Kurt was standing in there at the top of three-step staircase, which encompassed the entire living room perimeter and descended down into its center. Gone now were his distinguishingly unique midnight-blue colored skin, blue hair, yellow eyes, prehensile tail, and demon-like features. In there place was an unfamiliar man now before Logan, who had jet-black hair, dark-colored eyes and a much fairer complexion.

"As good as those people on television may be, I doubt that even they could work a miracle like this." Kurt chuckled and jovially remarked, as he walked down to join Logan once again on the sofa.

"What then, all that prayin' you been doin' finally payoff?" A curiously-confused Logan smirked and markedly inquired.

"No, it is all thanks to this small device." Kurt replied, as he pressed a small button on the side of his wrist-watch, causing his appearance to revert from its holographically-altered state back to normal, "Hank sent it to me from Muir Island a few months. He says that it is called an image-inducer, something that he apparently obtained from the friend of a friend. Today is the first time that I've actually used it, and it took me a number of minutes fiddling with the settings in the guest room before I figured out how to get it to work properly."

"You mean Beast didn't send you any instructions on how to use the damned thing?" Logan asked him.

"He did. But, since I was without a dictionary handy, I thought that I would probably figure it out faster on my own, rather than spending the rest of the day trying to decipher _Herr Hank's_ fairly detailed directions." Kurt joked, referring to Dr. Henry McCoy's habit of sometimes being unintentionally verbose and wordy in his conversations, and in his written correspondences.

"So, you mentioned you had this doo-hickey for a few months, and you're just now tryin' it out? You coulda been usin' it all this time and livin' it up, since you wouldn't stand out as much." Logan now commented, as he picked up a glass from a small coffee table in front of them, which had a caramel-colored liquid in it, and then proceeded to take a sip.

"And what, pass myself off as something that I am not?" Kurt replied, as he looked over at Logan with his now yellow-hued pupils, his generally humorous demeanor now turning much more serious.

"I was just sayin' you could go out and experience life like the rest of us, and not have to have to deal with the stares or bein' hassled by folks that're afraid of you just because you look different." Logan clarified.

"I've said the same thing to myself, every time that I've picked this image-inducer up and tried to find a reason to justify my using it. But, I keep being reminded of something that was said to me once." Kurt told him, as he hadn't told anyone about him having even received the image-inducer, not even Professor Xavier.

"And what's that?" Logan asked.

"That I shouldn't have to." Kurt told Logan, as he repeated the poignant statement made to him over a year ago in the woods not too far from Xavier's School in Westchester, a statement made to him by a woman who, because of her own mutant abilities, knew better than anyone what it was like to be able to change her own appearance and blend in with the crowd, "And the more that I thought about it, it did make a great deal of sense. After all, isn't that why Professor Xavier started his school in the first place, for his students and X-Men to help be the ones instrumental in building a world where mutants, where people like us, would be accepted as we are and for who and what we are? Using this device would seem almost hypocritical in that context, and I feel slightly embarrassed sometimes for even considering it."

"I get your point, Elf." Logan responded, as he sat the glass back down on the short rectangular table in front of them, "But, we don't live in Chuck's ideal world, at least not yet. And, you shouldn't be sittin' around feelin' guilty about wantin' to have a semblance of a normal life in this one we do have to live in. Hell, that's somethin' we all want a little of, even a guy like me."

After hearing Logan's statement, Kurt sat there crouched on the sofa in reflective silence for a moment, before speaking again.

"Profound words, _Mein Freunde_. And, coming from a man who is on the verge of settling down himself, which is a good sign I imagine." Kurt remarked, as a smile now returned to his face.

"Gettin' married is one thing, but I don't know about how settled or tame I'll ever get." Logan laughed in response, "Still, I don't think I can begin to imagine life now without havin' Mariko in it with me."

"Speaking of which, you could have gone with others. You did not have to stay behind here just to keep me company." Kurt told Logan.

"Nah, it's alright, I wasn't much up for goin' sight-seein' with Scott, Ali, and the kids. And M'iko 'n 'Ro certainly didn't need my help in makin' sure everything was ready for the party tonight. Plus, it gave us a chance to talk, just the two of us like we used to do back home." Logan told Kurt, as he stood up from the sofa with a now empty glass in his hand, "I'm gonna go pour myself another glass o' sake, you wanna try a shot?"

After sitting there silently again in a moment of internal debate, Kurt finally gave Logan an answer.

"I suppose one won't hurt. But, only one." Kurt acquiesced, as he wasn't the type to drink alcohol very often. And certainly not as much as Logan, whose mutant healing factor allowed him to imbibe as much alcohol as he wanted with virtually no ill or after-effects.

"Alright, I'll just make yours a double then." Logan smirked, as he walked from the sofa and headed towards the penthouse's kitchen to obtain another glass of sake, which was now one of his favorite alcoholic drinks.

With beer still remaining number one, of course.

**………………………………………………**

Later that evening, the gang that had been touring through Yokohama finally returned to Mariko's Tokyo Penthouse. They all immediately made their way inside and quickly changed into their semi-formal attire for the evening. While the girls put on fashionably-hot party and cocktail dresses, which came in widely varying styles and lengths in a multitude of different colors, the guys decked themselves out in casually-looking suits and ties.

Soon, Scott, Alison, Jubilee, Rogue, Leyu, Kitty, Remy, and Peter were making their way down to the building's parking garage, where one of Mariko's private limos was ready to usher them on. The limo took them over to the high-rise private nightclub located in the _Ginza District_ overlooking the city where Logan, Mariko, Ororo, Kurt and most of the couple's other guests were awaiting their arrival at this pre-wedding celebration, with the festivities having already gotten underway in the meantime.

"And, here I was thinkin' that we'd already been to the social event of the year, when we got invited to that big blowout at the Hellfire Club?" Jubilee remarked, as she and the others now walked into this upscale nightclub up on the twentieth-floor and saw that there were a number of important-looking people in there, some of whom appeared to be individuals of notable social standing, government officials, and possibly other dignitaries within Japan and from abroad.

"Yeah, well at least the atmosphere in this place doesn't automatically give you that stuffy and stuck-up vibe like we got back there." Kitty commented next, as she and Peter walked in behind Jubilee.

As the others filed in behind Jubilee, Kitty, and Peter, they were all immediately spotted by Logan, who came up to them dressed in a brown-colored suit, a dress-shirt that was in a burnt-orange color, and a matching brown tie to finish off his look.

"Ah thought you would've gone and traded that thing in by now?" Rogue said, as she came up and commented on Logan's outfit for the evening.

"Why, it's still a good suit? Plus, I figured you'd get a kick outta seein' your fashion-coordinating handiwork again, seein' as how it brought me so much good luck last time I had it on." Logan replied, referring to the fact that Rogue had picked out this very outfit for Logan when they were in Japan previously. It was right before Logan and Mariko went out on their first date together, and for these two reasons, it held special sentimental value for him.

But, as everyone took in the sight of Logan actually in a suit, that was nowhere near as shocking as what they were about to see next.

"Well, Ah'll be. Guys, take a gander over there." Rogue now said, as she looked past Logan and pointed out Ororo to the others, when she saw her approaching them.

But, it was very apparent that Ororo certainly wasn't alone this evening.

Ororo walked towards them arm-in-arm with someone, who appeared to be her date for the evening, and a handsome one at that. But, even more surprising than that, was the strikingly noticeable change in Ororo's appearance.

Gone were her long white tresses, which until recently had run down well past Ororo's shoulders. They were now replaced by hair that was of a much shorter length, and that also had ebony-shaded highlights interspersed evenly and fully within her naturally ivory-colored locks. This new style had been created earlier in the day by Mariko's own personal hair-stylist, after Ororo had mentioned and then thoroughly discussed making these radical changes with him.

"So, I wonder what Forge'll do when he finds out you came all the way over here, and got all dolled up to start running around with a brand new guy?" Jubilee teasingly said, as she walked closer to Ororo and the unfamiliar gentleman at her side, "That is, unless you're ready to name a price that's right enough to keep us all quiet?"

"If he is as truly as smart as his reputation would have us to believe, then perhaps Forge will learn in the future to accept any and all invitations to accompany such a ravishing creature abroad, and not to allow her out of his sight for even an instant unescorted." The man at Ororo's side smiled and wittily said in response, "That is, unless his intention is to invite another to steal her away from him."

Once they heard the man's distinctive voice, the entire group knew immediately that this person before them standing right next to Ororo was no stranger at all.

"Kurt…is that really you?" Alison now asked in an astonished tone, as she left Scott's side and came over to visually inspect him.

"Guilty as charged." Kurt chuckled, as he stood there with his appearance completely altered and was dressed in a holographically-induced black and white-pinstriped suit, complete with bowtie and a white formal-scarf draped across his shoulders around his neck. And where upon a closer look, Alison did recognize a few of Kurt's characteristic facial features beneath this elaborate disguise of his.

"Kurt, how'd you manage to pull this off?" Scott now also came up and curiously asked, as he was once again beside Alison and was just as unsure as the others about what feats of magic Kurt was working with.

"I will explain the details to you later." Kurt laughed and told Scott.

"Looks like both you and Kurt've been pretty busy today wit' de new looks eh, Stormy?" Remy now remarked, as he walked up and took in the sight of Ororo's new hairstyle and the low-cut shimmering silver sequined-gown that she had on. Remy was referring to Ororo's own fairly drastic change in appearance, even though it still wasn't anywhere as extreme of a makeover as was Kurt's.

"Yeah, what's with the new 'do anyways?" Jubilee also questioningly posed to Ororo.

"It is something that I have been considering for a few months, and I felt that now was the right time to make such a change." Ororo told them, as she looked at Jubilee and Remy, and then over at Kitty next to Peter, "I take it that you do not like it?"

"No, it's not that. I mean, I think it looks totally awesome, and you definitely know how to rock it." Jubilee replied, as she scrutinized Ororo's hair styling.

"I guess it'll just take us a little while for us to get used to it, that's all." Kitty added, as she also visually appraised it.

Just then, Mariko was at last able to make her way over to join her fiancé and their friends, after having just greeted the Japanese Finance Minister and his wife and politely thanked them for their attendance this evening.

"I have a table set aside for all of you, if you would just follow me." Mariko said to her newly-arrived guests', as she came up and stood next to Logan. Mariko was dressed this evening in an exquisitely conservative black satin skirt-suit, which had four gold rhinestone buttons on the front of its jacket.

"We will, but first someone here has a gift that they would like to give to the happy couple." Ororo now revealed to Mariko and Logan, while with a gesture from her hand she directed Peter over to an area behind one of the bars in the club.

"I had originally planned to give this to you following your wedding the day after tomorrow, but the others said that I should instead surprise you with it tonight." Peter said, as he carried a rectangular object wrapped in a linen sheet over to Logan and Mariko.

Peter then handed the shrouded gift to Logan, who removed the cloth sheet so that he and Mariko could take a look at what exactly this gift was. Having known Peter long enough to know that painting and sketching was his favorite leisure time activity, and having also personally seen some of Peter's works, Logan knew almost immediately what was underneath the cloth-covered item in his hands. While Logan was fully prepared to see some manner of illustrated nature scene on the stretched canvas, both he and Mariko were both nonetheless left speechless by the image now before them.

The portrait was one of both Logan and Mariko, showing them on the day when they first met at the Imperial Gardens in Tokyo. It was back in the spring during the traditional season of _Ohanami_, the time of year when the cherry blossoms were plentiful and visible everywhere there.

In Peter's depiction, it showed the newly introduced couple facing each other and grasping one another by both hands, while gazing into each other's eyes with the _Kokyo Higashi Gyoen_ section of the Imperial Gardens sitting directly behind them. And faded into the background all around them, Peter had visual representations of those very cherry blossoms that had brought them there in the first place.

"Pete…this is incredible." Logan managed to get out, as the man who rarely showed this kind of emotion publicly was genuinely choked up by the painting in his hands, "But, how in the world did you know about this anyways?"

"That would be me." Rogue stepped forward and happily acknowledged, "After Ah got your wedding invitation, Ah went and took some of the photos Ah had snapped over here and showed 'em to Peter. He told me it'd be no problem for him to make a portrait from them, but even Ah was surprised at how good it came out. Although, Ah guess Ah shouldn't have been, considerin' Peter is the school's artist-extraordinaire."

"That he is." Logan replied, as he handed the painting over to Mariko, and walked over towards Peter to shake his hand. But just as Peter was about return his mentor's handshake, Logan unexpectedly put his other arm around the larger Russian and pulled him into a very brief appreciatory hug.

While most of the time Peter was a man of a few words, just judging by the reaction that his artwork was able to evoke in Logan, it was further proof that a picture was truly worth a thousand words and that Peter's was a language that spoke volumes.

"Alright, enough o' this mushy crap, let's go start this party off right." Logan now told the group, as he released Peter and turned back around to motion for them all to go to their table. But while they all proceeded through the sizable crowd of people gathered in the club, Remy caught Rogue by the arm and gestured for her to wait for just a moment.

"What's up?" Rogue asked Remy, after they had walked over to an unoccupied corner in the club and it was just the two of them.

"You remember dat t'ing I told you I went lookin' for earlier today?" Remy reminded her.

"Oh that. Yeah, Ah vaguely seem to remember somethin' about you go somewhere today. Ah think?" Rogue smirked and coyly replied, this time determined to use a little reverse psychology on Remy and not relay her deep interest in whatever it was that he had been searching for while they were in Yokohama.

"Well you see, I went lookin' for a weddin' present for Logan and Mariko. But after I found it, I also wound up findin' somethin' else, somethin' dat I wanted to get just for you." Remy replied, as he pulled a large, black oval-shaped box from his suit-coat pocket.

"What's this?" Rogue asked him, as Remy placed the box into her satin-gloved hand.

"Only one way you gon' find out, _Cheré_." Remy told her.

With that, Rogue went ahead and opened the box. She then pulled a solid silver bracelet out of it, which had a round green gemstone as its center-stone, and had two smaller and similar stones on each side of the larger one on the bracelet.

"It's beautiful. But Remy, you didn't have to go and get this for me." Rogue said, as she held the bracelet in her gloved hand and carefully inspected it.

"I know, but I wanted to. See, de guy I bought it from said dis bracelet here has a dark-jade stone in it, which is rare and hard t'find. And dat right there automatically reminded me of you. Plus, I know how much dark green is yo' favorite color too." Remy said, as he took the bracelet and put it on Rogue's wrist. Once he had closed the box-clasp on the bracelet, Remy noticed how the stone almost exactly matched the forest-green outfit that Rogue had on, a dress ensemble that covered her from neck to toe.

"If Ah could kiss you right now, well, Ah'd…you know." Rogue now smiled and told Remy.

"Remy knows, and it's de thought dat counts." Remy replied, as he gently touched Rogue's fancifully-styled hair and looked into her light-brown eyes, seeing in them just how much she wanted to physically express her feelings towards him.

Meanwhile, as Rogue stood and admired the gift on her wrist for a moment, before she and Remy went to head over to the table join the others, Logan and Mariko had momentarily gone off by themselves to find somewhere to properly put Peter's portrait on display in there.

"It is rather ironic that we met back when the cherry-blossoms were in bloom." Mariko now said to Logan, after they had propped the painting up on an empty table in the club, and were now standing back a short distance to admire it.

"What's so ironic about it?" Logan turned his head and asked her.

"I suppose that is a poor choice of words, Logan-chan. I should have said that is coincidental, if anything." Mariko continued, "When I was a little girl, my father used to always call me his little cherry blossom. Traditionally, cherry blossoms have been thought to bring good luck, and that was certainly the case when we happened to meet on that day in the Imperial Gardens."

"Couldn't agree with ya more there." Logan replied, as he took Mariko's hand into his and they took one more look at the portrait, before turning to go tend to their guests'.

Meanwhile, over at the table where a conversation of another sort had started, whose purpose was to try and get one of those individuals that had just sat down there right back up.

"C'mon Ali, you know you want to." Jubilee semi-whined, as she sat across from Alison at their large round table in the club.

"I…don't think it's such a good idea." Alison replied, as she sat between Scott and Kurt, looking as though she were anxiously contemplating something, "I just don't want to end up causing any trouble for Mariko."

"Causin' trouble how? Especially, seein' as how that's normally my department anyhow." Logan now jokingly asked, as he and Mariko had made their way back over to them, and Logan's keen hearing had picked up the tail end of their conversation.

"Jubilee saw a karaoke machine over in the corner when we were coming to sit down, and she's been pestering Alison to get up and sing a song." Kitty explained, as Rogue and Remy settled into their chairs next to her and Peter.

"I don't see what the big deal is. Didn't you used to sing for a livin' in front of crowds ten times the size of the one in here?" Logan remarked to Alison, "Don't tell me you're gettin' a case of stage-fright?"

"Well, considering how my last concert turned out, can you much blame me?" Alison told Logan, referring to the riot in New York City that erupted when she was publicly outed as a mutant, "Outside of Magneto, I'm probably the most recognizable mutant on the planet, and I just didn't want anyone getting upset that Mariko even invited me here in the first place."

"If you would like to sing a song tonight, I know that I would be more than honored." Mariko reassuringly told her, as Alison sat and thought about it for a moment.

"Go ahead 'Lightengale', get up and strut your stuff." Logan also said to her, as he folded his arms over in front of him and gave her his vote of confidence.

"Alright, I guess I can give it a shot." Alison finally agreed, as she decided that maybe it was time for her to get back on the horse, so to speak, and once again do the one thing that she loved more than anything in the world.

To sing and to perform.

But, as Alison sat her white handbag down in her seat, which happened to match the tight and short-cut dress that she had on, she felt a tug at her arm that momentarily paused her journey.

"Knock 'em dead." Scott encouragingly told Alison, as he kissed her on the cheek, before she made her way across the crowded nightclub towards the small stage set up in there.

Leyu also got up from the table and went with Alison, going over to the club's entertainment hostess for the evening and explained to her what Alison wanted to do. The hostess immediately went over to the sound system's master control board and quickly faded out the symphonic instrumental music that had been playing in the club, before turning the karaoke machine on that was routed through the master board. The hostess proceeded to cue up the song that Leyu had requested, which was by J-Pop singer Chigusa Tonami and was called Miss You Forever, a song that had gone to number one in Japan and had stayed there for three consecutive weeks.

But, Leyu had done her homework when she had learned that international singer Alison Blaire would be attending her cousin Mariko's wedding, and had recalled reading that Chigusa's song was actually a cover version in Japanese of a song that Alison had originally written and recorded almost a year ago. And given the nature of their gathering, Leyu decided that this smooth love ballad would be the perfect choice for Alison to make her performing comeback with.

As the music started, the melodic beat sparked the all-too familiar sensation of butterflies flying around in Alison's stomach. But, it wasn't because she was afraid to be up there on stage, rather, it was actually the complete opposite. The excitement of performing and entertaining, of reaching inside of herself to hit that perfect note with her voice was what drove her, and it was those feelings that Alison wanted to once again grab a hold of and never relinquish.

As she got back into her performing groove in front of Mariko's guests, Alison treated them to an impromptu light show. It was all thanks to her mutant powers absorbing the sonic waves from the music playing around her, before she converted them into beaming rays of pure light. To put it simply, Alison was absolutely dazzling them at that moment, which caught the attention of another individual, although she wasn't anywhere inside of the club with them.

While the jubilant atmosphere in the club further lent itself to the evening's celebration of a new life about to begin for the happy husband and wife-to-be, up above on an adjacent rooftop a masked figure dressed in skin-tight dark-green, yellow, and black leather garb had been carefully and efficiently positioning herself into a makeshift sniper's nest, making sure to remain completely out of sight from the revelers below and from any other potential onlookers.

And, as she raised the long-ranged and high-powered sniper's rifle in her possession, which was easily capable of throwing out .50 caliber armor-piercing rounds at an alarming velocity, the masked figure placed the rifle's bipod assembly up on the edge of the roof in front of her. Using the night-scope lens on the top of her rifle she searched through the huge panel windows of the club down below, scanning the multitude of revelers in there. With a concentrated effort, she was able to quickly locate her intended target, and now took precise aim by properly leveling the sharply triangulated tip at the end of the sniper rifle's long barrel.

Once her mark had been spotted in the crosshairs of her scope, the assassin then locked the rifle's targeting mechanism and released the bolt-latch to load a single round into the weapon's chamber. The masked blonde now steadied herself up on the rooftop, as she slowly squeezed the rifle's trigger and a wicked smile suddenly came across her face. It was all in anticipation of accomplishing the first of many tasks that had been assigned to her this evening, which had been set out for her by Madame Hydra herself.

The first of those orders had predicated that Lady Hydra put a bullet through the heart of Mariko Yashida, and that she carry out such an act of horrific violence right in front of Mariko's own fiancé…

**…………………………………………………………**

Next Chapter: **Just for you, a view to a kill**…


	3. One Way or Another

Land of the Silver Sun pt. II

Written by Darkstorm5000

Disclaimer: The X-Men and related characters in their various incarnations are the property of Marvel Comics and Marvel Enterprises.

**…………………………………………**

Part 3- One Way or Another

Location: _Tokyo, Japan- Ginza District_

In this exclusive section of Tokyo's most popular tourist area, sits an opulently-built high-rise dining club. Which, was currently playing host to the pre-wedding party of one of Japan's most important social figures, Lady Mariko Yashida, and her husband-to-be the westerner known as 'John' Logan. But unknown to them or any of their attendees, on a nearby rooftop a modified, long-range sniper's rifle has been loaded and trained on this club down below, a high-powered rifle that was being firmly held in the hands of one of HYDRA's deadliest agents, Lady Hydra. This smiling blonde masked-figure, who was carefully looking through the lens of a rifle's scope on top of the rooftop adjacent to the club, was garbed in her own unique uniform consisting of a skin-tight dark-green, black, and yellow leather outfit.

She had been born Carol Danvers, but thanks to the post-hypnotic suggestion implanted in her psyche, she was no longer that woman. She had now reverted completely back to her villainous Lady Hydra alter-ego, both in mind and in body. And as Lady Hydra, she served the terrorist organization known worldwide as HYDRA as one of its top-ranking operatives, dedicating herself wholly to HYDRA's ideals and to the subversive group's cause of establishing it as a major global power; whose ultimate goal was to one day control the entire planet's vast natural, economic, and military resources and thus allow it to then dictate its own terms to the governments' of each and every one of these diverse nations around the world.

By killing the head of one of Japan's most powerful and influential families, Viper (who also held the title of Madame Hydra) hoped to strike a blow to the heart of the Clan Yashida by setting in motion an internal power struggle. HYDRA hoped to then use the ensuing dissension and strife amongst these powerful families vying for control to secure their own position amidst Japan's criminal underworld. And, Lady Hydra had hoped to accomplish this important mission entrusted to her by Madame Hydra, as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Utilizing the assassination techniques that had been drilled into her, Lady Hydra intended to strike at her target like a serpent, which HYDRA loosely drew upon for its namesake, and then disappear from sight.

Down below, international entertainer and superstar Alison Blaire was currently in the middle of a most impromptu performance in front of the guests in the club, as she passionately sang a ballad that she had dedicated to Mariko and Logan. But with the music from Alison's song, along with her husky and sultry voice filtering throughout the club, none of them would hear the 'click' outside of the rifle's trigger being pulled (which was virtually inaudible anyways). Nor, would they be able to hear the muffled shot from the rifle chamber ringing out in the nighttime sky, as a uranium-depleted bullet now headed through the silencer attached to Lady Hydra's rifle and straight for Mariko.

Well, with the exception of one individual in the club.

"**M'iko-get-down**!"

In that split-second moment between the shot being fired and the bullet speeding towards them, those words were the only ones that Logan had the time to utter. His ultra-acute sense of hearing had still allowed Logan to detect the sound of the rifle being fired outside, and his unbelievably fast reflexes in turn permitted him to turn to his right and forcefully shove Mariko down to the floor of the club.

'**_Skrackt_**!'

Was the surprisingly unremarkable sound heard as the powerful .50 caliber round, which Lady Hydra had just discharged from her weapon, penetrated one of the numerous 15 foot-tall window panes that lined the high-rise building's exterior, cracking the glass but not shattering it. But, instead of Lady Hydra hitting her intended target, it was Logan who wound up taking this bullet meant for Mariko Yashida. It slammed into his chest and ricocheted internally off of his unbreakable ribs, with bullet fragments bouncing around through his internal organs before they ripped out through his back and right side.

This armor-piercing projectile violently hit Logan with such incredible force that it took him up completely off of his feet, and launched him a few feet backwards through the air almost like a rag-doll. Which, is where he flew into one of the round and ornately decorated tables behind them, landing with a loud '**_Crack-Boom-Bam_**!'

"**LOGAN**!" Mariko screamed out first and then just gasped, as she sat looking up from the club's floor, which Logan had just shoved her down onto. All she could do was watch, as the man that she loved was cut down before her very eyes, all the while a sick, cold feeling having now risen up inside of her.

"**Crap,'djoujustseethat**!"

Jubilation Lee exclaimed next, as she and Scott Summers sprang to their feet when they saw Logan being gunned down, knocking their chairs backwards onto the floor.

"_Mein Gott_!"

Kurt Wagner proclaimed, both as an expression and as a beseechment to a higher power, as he also saw the man he had probably grown closest to in his time with the X-Men now being assaulted in such a horrifying manner, and he and Ororo immediately rushed over to Logan's side.

"Logan, no…"

Rogue barely managed to mutter, as she, Remy Lebeau, Peter Rasputin and Kitty Pryde were the last to stand up from their table.

While Peter went over to inspect the window were the shot had come in through, Remy proved that even without his staff handy he was always prepared for an emergency. Which was evidenced by the deck of cards in his pocket, of which he quickly pulled out three to hold in his hand and have them ready for a bio-kinetic charge at a moment's notice, as he followed Rogue and Kitty over to Logan.

While the shot had shocked all of the guests who bore witness to it, it had also managed to send an understandable sense of panic through the club. The majority of those invited, to what was supposed to be a celebration, now hastily made their way towards the exit of this expensive and luxurious nightspot at the urging of the Clan Yashida's private security guards, whom were on hand and were about a dozen in number. They had been stationed all around the room the entire time in an undercover capacity, having mastered the uncanny ability to seemingly blend in with the background of their surroundings and go unnoticed, until now.

As the guests continued to file out of the huge club in an orderly fashion, which was fairly amazing considering what had just happened in there, Alison came over from the stage where her performance had been abruptly halted. As she approached the X-Men, Alison trailed behind Leyu Yoshida and saw that Mariko's personal bodyguards were now gathering around Mariko and Logan, and that Dr. Ororo Munroe had also jumped into action by putting her vast medical knowledge and years of training to use.

Thoroughly examining Logan, Ororo first carefully checked his vitals for a pulse, but found nothing. In the meantime, Mariko had crawled the few feet across the floor over to the broken table where Logan was now laying. She simply knelt beside him with his other hand tightly grasped within hers, as Ororo unbuttoned Logan's blood-stained suit coat and dress-shirt and prepared to begin CPR on him. Mariko was so overcome and traumatized by the sheer brutality of what had unfolded in such a short amount of time, that she just knelt there staring down into the hauntingly vacant expression left on Logan's face. She desperately searched for any sign of life in Logan's still open eyes, eyes that were now just blankly staring up at the many crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling up above.

"He's gonna be alright, isn't he?" Alison now said, as she came up and stood next to Scott, fully aware of Logan's famed healing factor.

But, Alison's tone quickly became more uncertain of that fact, once she had the opportunity to see all of this bloodied carnage up close and personal. Especially, now that she was getting a first-hand glimpse of the gruesome entrance wound that the high-velocity round had carved and tore out of Logan's chest.

Meanwhile, the rest of the X-Men stood silently around Logan, while Mariko's personal security team went to secure the club and the rest of the building, also going to call the police and paramedics in the process. Like Remy, after the bullet had hit Peter's own defensive instincts kicked in. He went over to the window, and in the process, immediately converted his own body of flesh-and-blood into organic steel. This massive conversion, which left Peter's already bulging muscles just that much more fantastically over-sized, wound up splitting the seams in the coat and pants of his suit, even though that was the last thing of any concern on his mind at the moment. Now, as the fully armored X-man Colossus, he stood by the windows and scanned the nighttime skyline, searching for any sign of further unusual activity.

And in a matter of minutes, he found one.

"I see someone moving over there." Colossus said aloud to those in there with him, warning his teammates as he pointed up through the shattered window at a shadowy figure on a nearby rooftop, which of course drew their attention.

"Alright, once help arrives and gets Logan situated, we'll fan out and see if we can catch the shooter." Scott replied, now himself instinctively jumping into leader-mode.

"You're _(cough)_ not going to do anything."

Everyone still in the room was shocked when they heard this statement, which came out as a bare whisper in a very familiar gravelly-voice. They turned back down to look down at Logan, who had now suddenly regained consciousness after his healing factor had managed to seal up the wounds left in his body. Logan blinked his eyes a few times, and then started to move his arms and legs around slowly in an attempt to sit back up in the debris, which previously had been a huge solid-wood table with a fine linen tablecloth on top of it, but was now just a mess covered and soaked in his blood.

"Logan, you must remain still! You have been shot." Mariko told Logan, as she sat next to him and continued to hold his hand tightly in hers, now able to breathe a tiny bit easier once she saw her beloved stirring again.

"Yeah, I know." Logan said a little bit louder this time, responding to the fact that he knew that he had been shot, but definitely not agreeing with Mariko's assessment that he should remain lying down, as he continued to struggle and finally fought his way back up to his feet.

Despite the fact that he was standing back up after such a miraculous recovery, it was obvious that Logan was in absolutely no shape to do anything, as he was barely able to keep his balance on his own. But, what was more frightening to his fellow X-Men was the fact that Logan was now coughing up blood, which was coming out of his mouth and trickling out through his nostrils.

"_(cough)_ Get me up there, Petey. It's payback time." Logan now grumbled, as he staggered towards Colossus and the cracked window that the armored Russian was standing next to.

"Logan, you're talkin' crazy!" Rogue now exclaimed, as she stood next to Remy with the others and was simply unable to fathom what Logan thought that he was proving by this macho display.

"Logan, stand down until the EMT's get here. That's an order!" Scott now also firmly stated as he followed behind Logan, looking out through the window himself in an attempt to catch sight of the individual that Colossus had pointed out to them.

"I ain't got time to debate this _(cough)_…with you Summers. Only thing I need right now is five minutes alone with that trigger-happy asshole up there." Logan stubbornly replied without even bothering to turn back and look at Scott, as he slowly continued across the club over towards the window, and also continued to intermittently cough up blood.

"To do what? Go up there 'n gettin' yourself killed again, only this time permanently?" Jubilee now pleaded with Logan with tremendous worry in her voice, as she stood next to Leyu.

Leyu was now kneeling down beside Mariko and trying to console her teary-eyed cousin, who held reservations that were similar to Jubilee's, and who had been justifiably upset by the prospect of her fiancé now going to confront this attempted-murderer in his current condition.

But it was all to no avail, as Logan still continued wobbling forward. He ripped the bloodied, burnt-orange dress-shirt that he was wearing off, only to reveal an even bloodier white muscle-shirt underneath. Which, had a large bullet hole over on the left side of his chest, and also had other holes over on the right side of his back and close to his kidney areas, showing where the bullet's fragments had shredded through his body and then exited.

"**God Logan, please just stop**!" Kitty now loudly implored of Logan, as she herself was also on the verge of tears at having watched Logan being brutally gunned down right in front of her, and then witnessing its grisly aftermath, "We all get it, you're super-mega-tough, you don't have to keep tryin' to prove it to us. But right now, you look like you're about ready to fall over, and whoever's up there's way too dangerous for you to go 'n butt heads with."

But whereas the others had been essentially ignored by Logan, Kitty's lamenting plea had finally managed to get him to pause for a moment. And at the very least, she had gotten Logan to turn back around to acknowledge her.

"**Well, that sonofabitch up there's about to find out I'm as dangerous as they come, Short-stuff**!" Logan both yelled and growled simultaneously back at Kitty, with his growing infuriation at what had just happened only serving to further emotionally distress her. Kitty now started to cry, and as student deputy-leader, Rogue took it upon herself to come over and try to comfort the youngest member of the X-Men.

Meanwhile, in an inconceivably short amount of time, Logan had stopped coughing up blood. Now, a menacing scowl came across his face, one of an animal preparing to strike and pounce on his prey. For those who had seen it before, they now knew that Logan had been pushed beyond the limits of his own self-control, and that The Wolverine was on the verge of flying into one of his uncontrollable berserker rages.

"**Pete, fast-ball special! NOW**!" Logan shouted at and ordered Colossus, as he gave the armored-mutant a look that could have burnt right through him.

Colossus looked over at the other X-Men, and then back at Logan, and simply shook his head. He too thought that it was mistake for Logan to try to take on whoever was responsible for the shooting in his current condition. But, Colossus acquiesced and did as Logan had asked of him, picking up his teacher in his metallized right-arm, while using his other armored-fist to lightly tap the cracked window next to him and break it out completely. Colossus then spun around a couple of times, before he sent Logan hurtling up through the nighttime air like a baseball, as the incensed mutant now soared upward towards the opposing rooftop where the rifle-shot had come at them from.

But, as soon as Logan had been ejected from the club at a remarkable acceleration to meet the attempted murderer of his fiancée face-to-face, those left behind were soon about to learn that they too still faced a threat of considerable danger to their own lives from this most venomous individual.

"Nightcrawler, I don't care what Logan said. I want you and Colossus to teleport over there and give him a hand, the rest of us'll be over there soon enough." Scott was saying to Nightcrawler, Colossus, and to the other X-Men as he began to formulate their battle stratagem, when Jubilee interrupted him.

"Um, I don't know about you guys, but all of a sudden I'm not feelin' so hot." Jubilee suddenly said, as she had begun to feel very flush and was now having difficulty breathing.

"Now that you mention it, Ah'm startin' to feel kinda dizzy myself, girl." Rogue responded to her best-friend, as she stood next to Kitty and they too started to feel a bit light-headed and queasy to their stomachs.

In that moment Mariko, Scott, Alison, Kurt, Leyu, Ororo, and Remy all, with the exception of Colossus, realized that they were also experiencing similar symptoms of nausea, dizziness, and severe fatigue. Surveying the room, in a matter of seconds Scott was able to immediately discover what the cause of this phenomenon was.

"Poison gas _(cough)_…coming in through the air vents." Scott verified for them, as he pointed up towards the ventilation grates high above them in the club's ceiling, which had a barely visible mist slowly filtering into the immense room that now caused him and the others in there to start coughing violently.

**…………………………………………………**

While the X-Men were left to deal with this latest crisis back inside of the club, a Wolverine was now preparing to face a most dangerous foe, after having been launched across a busy Tokyo-street more than twenty stories above it.

"Alright bub, get ready to have your ass handed to ya!" Wolverine shouted, just as he landed on the adjacent rooftop, his clothes still covered in his own blood even though his healing factor had stopped the external hemorrhaging from his body.

Now that he was up there with the shooter, Wolverine had an unfettered view of the guy that pulled the trigger, and saw that 'she' wasn't a guy at all. Nonetheless, he still got an exceptional look at the woman who had attempted to kill his fiancée, and who had wound up hitting him with that bullet meant for Mariko.

At first sight, it was readily apparent to Wolverine that, if looks could kill, then Lady Hydra's tempting physical features could have easily knocked any man dead. She stood before him on the rooftop garbed in a sleeveless, olive-green leather-leotard that was trimmed in black and yellow, and which left very little to the imagination. Lady Hydra's straight and lengthy blonde-hair draped down just below her shoulders, where it rested gently against a tiny cape in an olive color-scheme similar to her uniform that it was attached to.

Lady Hydra's ensemble was accessorized by a pair of stiletto, thigh-high leather boots in the same olive-green tone, a matching pair of nearly shoulder-length leather gloves, and an olive-colored mask that covered most of her face and concealed her true identity from the rest of the world. This was in spite of the fact that everyone who had known Carol Danvers, thought her to have died years ago.

Wolverine now also noticed that across the chest of her outfit was a highly visible HYDRA insignia, a symbol which he had seen before, and that consisted of a skull with serpent-like tentacles protruding out from underneath it.

"Well, I had intended on dealing with you later, but I suppose I can kill you now just as easily." Lady Hydra replied, as she stood on the rooftop with her left hand on her hip and looked Wolverine over, standing roughly fifteen feet away from him.

In her right hand was a small remote switch, which she had just moments ago used to activate the small poison gas bombs located in the air ducts of the club. And lying on the rooftop right next to Lady Hydra was the high-powered sniper's rifle, which she had also just used to shoot Wolverine with.

"Lady, you're about to find out that ain't quite as easy as you might think." Wolverine snarled in response to her threat, as he held his right-hand straight out in front of him and a low-level 'snikt' sound accompanied one set of adamantium claws, which now emerged from out of his fist.

Wolverine then sprinted towards Lady Hydra, with both sets of claws now popped and held out to his side in an attack position. Wolverine's charging advance immediately drew out five HYDRA soldiers, who had been lurking in the shadows of the rooftop close by. These armed men were also dressed in HYDRA's traditional green and yellow-trimmed uniforms, having been dispatched by Madame Hydra to accompany her top lieutenant on this most important of missions. They promptly formed a defensive barrier between Wolverine and Lady Hydra, and without any further hesitation, they loaded the various semi-automatic weapons in their possession, raised them, and then proceeded to empty their magazine clips in Wolverine's direction…

Meanwhile, back down in the club--

As the enormous room continued to fill with the gas seeping down from the air vents up in the ceiling, pandemonium now set in earnest. Most of the guests were starting to feel some of the toxin's effect, and in their attempt to flee, desperately crammed towards the exit.

But, not the X-Men, and certainly not Scott Summers.

As the team's first-in-command, Cyclops fully embraced and took great pride in his role as their consummate leader. He made it a point to always be prepared for any potential situation or emergency, and at the moment, he was as cool and as calm as could be. Within a matter of seconds, Cyclops had assessed and reassessed their current predicament by examining every conceivable strategy in his mind, all the while pulling a smaller, more compact version of his battle-visor from out of his pocket. Unfolding the ruby-quartz visor and placing it across his face, which granted Cyclops complete control over the pure energy that flowed unchecked out of each eyeball, he could now use his optic blasts to respond accordingly and help to save those trapped in there from this attempted massacre.

"Storm, I want you to send a concentrated air blast…_(cough)_ through each of those vents, so you can push whatever that is flowing out back up there, and then take it out from its source." Cyclops now instructed the team's second-in-command.

"Consider it done." Storm confidently replied, as she raised her hands, which were still stained with the blood from her earlier efforts in aiding along Logan's healing-factor assisted recovery.

Storm was also feeling the effects of the gas like Scott and everyone else, but she was just as determined as Scott to not let this obstacle impede their efforts to do what was needed to help save them all. Storm's pupils now constricted and grew smaller, as her psionic control over the elements went into action.

Suddenly, a small gust of wind began to flow throughout the club from seemingly out of nowhere. And just as quickly, the breeze increased in intensity, turning into a gale-force current that shattered the metal grates on one of the air vents up in the ceiling, and further pushed it back up into the airshaft.

Storm's intense microburst of air delivered the desired result, as it also pushed much of the toxic mist back up into the air duct before it could enter the club. She then further pushed the metal canisters, which the gas was coming out of, further back into the airshaft and sent it all of the way back through the ventilation system. Storm wound up doing a tremendous amount of damage to these steel ventilation tunnels, as the fans and other equipment inside of the air-intake system were sheared to pieces from her efforts in expelling the poisonous gas canisters and discharging them outside onto the building's rooftop exterior.

While Storm was using her powers to rapidly take out each of the canisters in the six air vents above in the club, Cyclops in the meantime went to work to finish doing his part. He went to use his visor, which while being more versatile and portable when compared to his regular battle-visor, also had a shorter and more limited range. But, it still did its job by permitting Cyclops to shoot out the window-panes on the club's exterior, as he chose to skip across and expeditiously knock out every other window in the row.

"Okay Storm, you can finish clearing out the rest of the room through those openings." Cyclops now told her, as Storm now sent a new and much stronger gust of wind throughout the club, this time directing it through the open spaces in between the window panels that Cyclops had just punched out.

The residual gas left in the club now quickly dissipated, as Storm's winds had also caused a number of tables and chairs in there to slide around, while most of the guests tried to grab onto something to anchor themselves.

After Storm was done with her cleansing breeze, the guests all stood up and resumed their desire to leave, while the X-Men were left with a brief moment to catch their breath's, this time without inhaling any toxic substances in that air. An as the winds in the club calmed down, Alison stood back up and slowly made her way over towards Cyclops.

"Wow 'leader-man', bullets and poison gas? Somebody out there must really not be a fan of mine…" Alison now smiled and jokingly said to Cyclops, who was close by, her eyes still watering from inhaling this strange mist.

But after taking just a few steps, the toxic effect of the gas that Alison had had taken in caused her to unexpectedly collapse and pass out. Luckily, she was close enough to Scott by this point that he was able to reach out and catch her in his arms, just in the nick of time.

Meanwhile, most of the guests continued to anxiously file out of the club to the stairs and elevators. Mariko, Leyu, and the rest of the X-Men, who had wound up inhaling the lion's share of this unknown asphyxiant, were for the most part the only ones left in the main part of the club. They all sat down in chairs or on the floor and tried to cope as best they could with the poison gas's effects, waiting for the emergency medical personnel that had been summoned to arrive.

But, being the only one who was completely unaffected by this toxic inhalant thanks to his current armored state, Colossus now went back over to his vigil by the window and looked out across the nighttime sky, watching as a most brutal fight over on an adjacent rooftop raged on.

**……………………………………………**

Instead of snappy or sarcastic banter being exchanged between Wolverine and the HYDRA soldiers as they fought, there was only the frenzied grunting and growling of a man, who now freely unleashed the most feral and savage aspects of his own being against them.

Wolverine moved with great effort to dodge the soldiers' machine-gunfire, all the while kicking, slashing, and hacking at them with his adamantium claws. Lady Hydra stood a number of feet away, her arms folded over in front of her as she watched and studied the brutal efficiency with which Wolverine visited upon them. Wolverine was unrelenting, as he destroyed the soldiers' weapons with his razor-sharp claws, and then finished them off by stabbing them, and in a few instances, relieving some of them of their limbs and other various body parts through adamantium amputation.

"Now, it's just me and you." Wolverine once again snarled, as the last of the HYDRA soldiers that he had been fighting with keeled over, and hit the rooftop with a lifeless thud.

But, choosing to also pass up the opportunity to deliver yet another clichéd statement dipped in sarcasm, Lady Hydra instead made use of the element of surprise to her own advantage. She had been closely watching Wolverine, as he ferociously butchered her men one after another, studying his moves and fighting-style, and looking for anything that might turn out to be of use to her.

Lady Hydra had immediately noticed that, while on the surface Wolverine appeared to have inexplicably recovered from the bullet-wound that she had earlier inflicted on him, his reaction time and reflexes were obviously very much still affected by those injuries. This was despite the fact that he had just cut down some of HYDRA's finest-trained soldiers in so many minutes, and that his clothes were now soaked as much in their blood as his own. And Wolverine, who had pretty much snapped and was now fully caught up in one of his berserker rages, prepared to do the same to her. But, he was completely unaware of the fact that Lady Hydra also had unique powers of her own, which weren't immediately perceptible to the naked eye.

Without warning, Lady Hydra launched herself through the air at Wolverine at a frightening speed, flying into him like a human missile. She slammed her fist dead-center into his chest, right where the heavy-caliber bullet had penetrated, landing her blow with a fist that was easily capable of bending hardened steel in its bare hand. And, when the plethora of internal injuries that Wolverine's body was still contending with were taken into consideration, injuries which included a punctured lung that was still trying to knit itself back together, receiving such a thunderous shot from an individual who was as strong as Lady Hydra was certainly no joke.

Lady Hydra's simple, yet extremely effective tactic, managed to knock the wind out of Wolverine's one good and still functioning lung, momentarily taking the fight out of him as they both traveled high up into the air and over the edge of the rooftop. Now hovering together far above the busy Tokyo-street, Lady Hydra looked at Logan as she held his limp body in her grasp, before simply dropping and releasing him to the fate of a solid and unforgiving street pavement some thirty-stories below.

While Wolverine's adamantium-skeleton would ensure that none of his bones would be broken from such a monstrous fall, even at this height, with his healing factor having already been forced to work double-time tonight, the question was whether the rest of him would be able to get up and walk away from the unbelievable amount of damage that such a plunge would undoubtedly do to his body?

Luckily, with friends' like those that Logan had, he wouldn't have to learn the answer to that question, at least not tonight. With Colossus having watched the entire exchange between Wolverine and Lady Hydra, he then relayed the fact that Logan was falling to the other X-Men. Nightcrawler immediately responded, and ditched the holographically-induced disguise that he had come to the party in. Nightcrawler then used his mutant teleportation powers to jump out and grab a semi-conscious Logan in mid-air, the both of them reappearing together back inside of the club a few seconds later in a bluish-black cloud of smoke.

Logan now lay on the floor of the club, attempting to catch his breath and regain his bearings as his body tried to cope with this latest trauma to it. In the meantime, Nightcrawler had passed out on the floor right next to Logan, blacking out from the strain of having grabbed his friend and teammate from a fall at such a tremendous speed, and from having performed such a daring rescue right on the heels of his being exposed to the harmful, and possibly lethal, gas that Lady Hydra had released inside of the club.

**…………………………………………………**

Location: _Tokyo, Japan- Shinbashi District, Mitsuku General Hospital_

Sitting just south of the famed Ginza is the Shinbashi District in downtown Tokyo, which is where many of the pre-wedding party's attendees had been taken for medical treatment. And with the notoriety that surrounded Mariko's family, she and the X-Men had managed to score their own private section in one of the hospital wards. Which her bodyguards and the police promptly sealed off, both for obvious security reasons, and in addition to wanting to keep away any curious reporters who may have already gotten wind of the incident and were looking for a story.

Being one of the few of those brought in who was currently up and around, Logan had spent the better part of the last hour arguing with nearly half a dozen doctors, who wanted him to lie down so that they could check him over and make sure that he was okay. Logan, who was not keen on being in a hospital to begin with and definitely wasn't eager to have anyone prodding or probing him given his past, had tried to convince them that he was fine despite having taken a bullet right in his chest, and that there were others who really needed their help more than him. After continuing this conversation for a number of more minutes, Logan finally won and ended the discussion when he abruptly turned and walked off from the doctors. Now, he found himself wandering up and down this cordoned-off corridor in the hospital.

Logan first went into Mariko's room, so that he could check on how his fiancée was doing. In the other beds in this hospital room with Mariko were Ororo and Alison, all three of them awake and for the most part responsive. Although, they did have oxygen masks on their faces to assist their breathing, which prevented Logan from being able to strike up a conversation with any of them at the moment.

The hospital staff was busy in there administering antidotes to the three ladies, which they hoped would be successful in counteracting the mysterious toxins that they had all been exposed to inside of the club. After seeing that their recovery was progressing along nicely, and after giving his true love a brief kiss on her forehead, Logan next found himself passing by the room where Rogue, Kitty, Leyu, and Jubilee were also laying down, being examined, and were receiving oxygen and treatment for their exposure to the poison. And, where Kitty had gotten out of her bed and was busily explaining to the medical personnel that they should avoid any direct skin contact with Rogue, who was still very drowsy at the moment, which was just as she had explained to the EMT's that had brought them there earlier.

Further down the hallway, Logan now walked onward and came to a stop outside of the room that Scott, Peter, Remy and Kurt were in. It was in here that Logan now overheard them trying to convince an apprehensive hospital staff that, in Kurt's case, it was actually safe to touch him. But, Kurt himself was still out cold from his courageous mid-air save of Logan, and the staff's hesitance was more than likely due to Kurt's unusual physical features, which consisted of his midnight-blue skin and an overall demon-like appearance.

Logan was preparing to go in and raise a ruckus, as only he could, in regards to their reluctance to treat his still unconscious friend. Then out-of-the-blue (no pun intended), Peter suddenly armored his own body up. He told them that they should be more concerned about him hurting them, if anything happened to Kurt because of their unwillingness to help him. And that as health-care practitioners, that they should be ashamed of holding such discriminatory attitudes towards a patient.

"Looks like mine and Short-stuff's influence is actually startin' to rub off on the boy." Logan smiled and silently chuckled to himself, as he now went over and took a seat in one of the many empty chairs lining the hallway.

Logan sat down in the barely cushioned-chair, closed his eyes with a sighing breath, and then placed his forehead against the open palms of his hands. Logan just sat there wondering how the last couple of hours could have turned into such a huge mess? What was supposed to be a simple and joy-filled night of his friends' getting together to celebrate his and Mariko's wedding the day after tomorrow, which would mark the two of them beginning a new life together, had almost wound up costing these people their lives, the very people with whom Logan was the closest to in this world.

His family, if you will.

Logan was not the kind of person who was easily influenced by, or even given to believing in, such things as destiny or fate. But after everything tonight, a small part of him couldn't help but entertain the possibility that maybe this was some kind of foreboding reminder for him, telling him that tremendous violence, pain, and loss were to be an inevitable and inescapable part of his life?

As Logan sat and considered all of these things, and more, his musings were interrupted by a familiar scent approaching. Which, he certainly hadn't been expecting, especially since this individual to whom the scent belonged wasn't even supposed to be in the local area tonight.

This man, who now stood right in front of Logan, was dressed in an outfit consisting of dark-tan pants, a pair of black gloves, and a red long-sleeve leather top with numerous horizontal buckles that ran down his chest. He had a small Japanese flag on the right-shoulder of his uniform, and he was better known to the people of his country by his more popular and highly-descriptive moniker of Sunfire.

While most mutants world-wide had been regarded as super-powered menaces to be feared, and at the very least not trusted, Sunfire had managed to positively ingratiate himself into his country's public consciousness over the years. It was through his heroic and selfless acts in their defense that he had helped to earn a place as a national patriot in many of their eyes.

And Sunfire's work over the years, with Detective Takimoto and the National Police Agency, eventually caught the attention of those in the upper-echelons of the Japanese government. The result was an offer to Sunfire for him to head up a special new division being created within Japan's National Department of Special and Covert Investigations a few months ago. It came right on the heels of his helping to bring down Tokyo's Jigoku criminal underworld, and it was an offer that Sunfire accepted soon afterwards.

As Logan now looked up to see Shiro Yoshida, who was standing in front of him, he saw a most austere expression on his face that relayed the seriousness and concern of his current mood. Shiro, who was cousin to Mariko and older brother to Leyu, had immediately rushed over to the hospital as soon as he heard the news regarding a disturbance at their semi-formal party tonight.

"(What has happened here?)" Shiro calmly asked Logan, as he now came over and sat down in an empty chair right next to him.

This was more of a rhetorical question, since Shiro had already gotten a good account of the nature of the disturbance in the Ginza district from the police. Shiro had first heard about it upon his return from a recent and urgent assignment away from Tokyo. And, he now presumed that Logan had most likely been caught smack-dab in the middle of it, just from the sight of his white muscle-shirt that was stained with dried blood, which he still had on.

"(A bunch of thugs in green get-ups tried to kill us, Shiro-san. Mariko, specifically.)" Logan responded to Shiro in plain Japanese, "(Got an up-close and personal with them, and by the looks, I think they were with HYDRA.)"

"(HYDRA? Why would they be trying to kill any of you?)" Shiro replied, his question still more of a general one to himself, than an actual query to Logan.

"(Your guess's as good as mine. But, I'd say it's someone with a major grudge against M'iko, especially to go all out and hire a professional outfit like that to pull it off.)" Logan stated, revealing a few of his own developing theories regarding whom he suspected of ordering this hit on Mariko.

"(I imagine that since she is a high-profile figure, it would make her an expected target in this country. And, have you not forgotten about the bounty that the Yakuza and Hand reportedly placed on all of us, following The Silver Samurai's arrest?)" Shiro reminded him.

"(No. I haven't forgotten about that at all.)" Logan angrily replied in a low growl, as his suspicions were quickly starting to fall into place, "(Still, that kind of muscle doesn't come cheap, and it would take someone with a lot of stroke to be able to turn HYDRA loose on us.)"

Then, as Logan and Shiro were in the middle of their conversation, a young Asian woman with long, golden-brown hair appeared at the end of the hallway. She now steadily made her way down the corridor towards Shiro and Logan, and at initial glance, looked as though she wasn't even in her early twenties yet.

"(Did you find anything?)" Shiro now asked this mystery woman, as he stood up from his seat to greet her, just as she stopped in front of them.

"(The initial sweep of the hospital's perimeter checked out fine.)" This eye-catching, yet very serious woman replied. She was wearing a red leather jacket, which was similar to Shiro's top down to its color-tone and a small Japanese flag on her right shoulder. She also had on a pair of tight black leather pants, and had a brown mini back-purse slung around her shoulder to finish her look.

("So Honey-Lemon, you come down here all by yourself?)" Logan smiled, as he also stood up to greet her, and now asked her.

("That's 'Special Agent' Honey-Lemon to you, buster!") Agen…(I mean) Special Agent Honey-Lemon, who was also from the Japanese government's newly formed Division of Super-Powered Activities, smirked and sarcastically replied to Logan, ("Don't worry your head about it, the rest of the team is all here. I left them to continue with a more thorough reconnaissance outside, while I came up here and reported to Lieutenant Yoshida.")

"(Nice to hear the gang's all here then.)" Logan playfully said to her.

"(And what's up with you starting some kind of riot over in the Ginza, anyways?)" Honey-Lemon now came closer to Logan, as she semi-accusingly questioned him while pointing a stern finger in his direction, "(I would think that the melee you had all of us involved in when I saw you last, would have been enough to tide you over for a while? You could have at least waited until your honeymoon was over.)"

"(What can I say, doll? Me and trouble go together like this.)" Logan said, as he continued his light-hearted conversation with Honey-Lemon by mockingly holding up two of his fingers for her, and then crossing them one over the other, "(But this time I didn't start it, someone shot at us first. And, now I'm starting to wonder if it might have been retaliation for that little heart-to-heart I had with the head of the Clan Tatsu'o a few weeks ago, after I went and kicked in his front door that night to drive home the point that Mariko's decision to cut all of the Clan Yashida's illegal ties with them was final, and not up for any re-negotiations?)"

"(I doubt that he would be able to institute any such pact with HYDRA, Logan-san. And, certainly not without receiving approval from the other Yakuza families to take such action.)" Shiro surmised, "(Which, I am sure that you aware is highly unlikely at the moment, given their current state of affairs with most of their leadership in jail or in hiding, and with this street-war for territorial control raging on between them.)"

"(Did you say HYDRA?)" Honey-Lemon now asked Logan and Shiro, looking for confirmation that they had actually mentioned the organization's name.

"(Yeah, they're the ones who gave me this air-conditioned shirt I got on.)" Logan replied, as he pointed at the bullet-hole in his bloodied muscle shirt, "(I even tangled with some super-powered chick of theirs, had blonde hair and wore a mask too. And, she also had one killer right-hook on her.)"

"(It sounds like Lady Hydra that you are describing.)" Honey-Lemon replied, astonished that Logan had faced her and lived to tell the tale.

"(You know her?)" Logan now curiously asked her.

"(I know of her. Lady Hydra is one of HYDRA's best-trained operatives. She is an extremely powerful individual, and for that reason, she is also extremely dangerous. During my time in the Intelligence Division, we maintained files on all incoming data regarding global terrorists and their latest activities. And Lady Hydra's name was one that remained consistently at the top of that list, until it dropped off completely more than a year ago.)" Honey-Lemon told them, "(Strange, that she would choose to resurface here in Japan, and now.)"

"(Then that nails it! Some bastard with mighty deep pockets, and even deeper connections, is definitely in on this.)" Logan responded, his tone as infuriated as it was determined to get to the bottom of this.

"(Agent Honey-Lemon, I want you to take the others and establish a perimeter outside, and make sure to coordinate it with the police who are already here. I am going to check to see how my cousin and my sister are doing. When I am finished, I will be out shortly to join all of you.)" Shiro said, as he now turned towards the end of this hospital wing where everyone was being cared for in their rooms.

"(Yes, sir.)" Honey-Lemon nodded her head and replied, as she prepared to take her leave and do as she had been ordered.

But, Honey-Lemon had one last thing to say to Shiro, before heading down to the elevators at the end of this long hallway that they were standing in.

"(Lieutenant, would you tell Leyu that I…and the rest of the team, that we will be back up later, to see how she and Lady Mariko are both doing.)" Honey-Lemon looked up and anxiously asked Shiro, as she then quickly turned away from him and hurried back down the hallway in the same direction that she had come from, disappearing around the corner even faster.

While Shiro now headed for the room where Mariko, Alison, and Ororo were in, Logan was once again left standing there alone. He now carefully contemplated what his next move was going to be, and his plans certainly didn't include him spending the rest of this night twiddling his thumbs in this currently empty hallway.

Well, empty-plus-one actually.

"Sounds like dis list of de usual suspects, it just keeps growin' and growin' don't it, _Mon Ami_?" Remy abruptly said, as he broke the relative silence of the hallway by announcing his presence to Logan.

Remy had also just revealed how much he had overheard of the conversation Logan had just had with Shiro and Honey Lemon, as he had been inconspicuously leaning against a wall around the corner from them.

"Well 'Gumbo', I'm about to go free up alotta space on that list, by crossin' some o' those names off and sendin' 'em straight to the top of the obituary column!" Logan emphatically replied, revealing to Remy what his intentions now were.

"Seems t'me like de aut'orities got dis one under control." Remy told him, as he pulled his slightly reddish-brown hair out of the single ponytail that he usually kept it in.

"I don't want things under control! I'm gonna put an end to this, before those jokers come back and take another shot at us!" Logan told him, as he turned away from Remy and was about to head towards the elevators, "Tell M'iko and the others I'll be back soon enough."

"Dat gonna be kinda hard for me t'do, 'specially since I'm gon' be wit' you so I can watch yo' back." Remy now stated to Logan, as he took a few steps towards him and put his hand on Logan's shoulder.

"I don't recall askin' for your help on this one." Logan dissentingly responded to his offer, by pushing Remy's hand away from his shoulder, "And, this is somethin' I'd just as soon take care of on my own. And, in my own way."

"Why? 'Cause Mariko's yo' lady? Well, she's my friend and I care about her too. She coulda gone and held my past against me, but she didn't. Hell, she went so far as t'vouch wit' de authorities for me, even after I tried to steal her family's Honor Sword from her. You don't meet too many people like dat in life, least I haven't." Remy ardently explained, as the two men now stood facing one another in the hallway together, "And whoever tried to kill all of us, now they gotta answer t'you AND t'Kid Creole for it."

Logan stood there for a moment in silence, his expression unchanging in this test of wills, as Remy now flashed him his patented million-dollar smile.

"Fine, I ain't got time to argue with you, 'Cajun'. You can roll with me, just as long as you don't slow me down none, or get in my way." Logan told him, as he gestured with his hand for Remy to follow him down towards the elevator shaft on that floor

"Slow you down, me? Never! Gambit hasn't never felt better." Remy boastingly replied, as they continued on together.

"Which, brings up a good point. You're back up on your feet and movin' about, no worse for wear, miiggghhty quick. Especially, for a guy without a healin' factor. Care to explain how that is?" Logan paused and stopped, turning to his left to pose his question to Remy directly.

"Just lucky, I s'ppose." Remy answered him, with a twinkle in his red on black eyes, and a smirking grin that feigned a deceptive ignorance.

Logan could sense right away that there was more to this story than what he was being told, and that luck had very little to do with the former thief's speedy recovery. But, without having the luxury of time to pry it out of Remy, Logan decided to go ahead and let the subject drop for now.

"So, where're we off t'first?" Remy now asked Logan, as they stood by the elevator doors and waited for one to open up.

"First, we're gonna swing by the penthouse and pick up our gear. Then, we're gonna go pay a visit to suspect number one. And, I'm sure he'll be just as happy to see the both of us, as we'll be to see him." Logan replied, as he glanced back over at Remy.

Now, it was Logan's turn to deliver a rather vague explanation, along with a sarcastic grin on his face, and just then, the elevator opened up that would shuttle the duo back down to the hospital's first-floor, so that they could begin their hunt for answers.

**…………………………..………………………**

Location: _Yokohama, Japan- Shin-Yokohama District_

On a sparsely occupied street in this central shopping district in Yokohama, sits a multitude of spacious and accommodating department stores. Although at this late hour they were all now closed, while the employees within were diligently preparing for the next day's business. However, at one of these stores in particular, those inside weren't busy restocking any shelves or checking over the store's inventory.

As a matter of fact, their current efforts had nothing at all to do with the actual functioning of this store. Which probably shouldn't come as a surprise, since the hidden sub-levels that they were in and were located far beneath the store technically didn't even exist, at least according to the building's blueprint designs.

It was from this secret underground area beneath this department store that HYDRA had cleverly established another of its numerous and well-camouflaged bases of operations. And, it was from this secluded staging area that this terrorist organization happened to coincidentally spot four teenaged-girls visiting from Tokyo earlier in the day, who had been shopping more than ten floors above in the department store. These four young ladies had come to town to do a little sight-seeing, before returning to Tokyo to attend the engagement and pre-wedding party of two close friends, and in one case, of her cousin.

"_Hail HYDRA! Immortal HYDRA! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off one limb and two more shall take its place! We serve the Supreme HYDRA, as the world shall soon serve us_!"

This was the mantra being chanted as it resounded throughout this underground hangar, being repeated by a few hundred individuals dressed in green and yellow hooded uniforms in there. These loyal adherents to the HYDRA _Bruderschaft_ (Brotherhood) were now acknowledging their leader's arrival, welcoming Madame Hydra with their traditional motto. They did so, while Lady Hydra silently stood on a steel-grated balcony up above them and patiently awaited Madame Hydra's elevator platform to complete its descent down into this sub-level equipment depot.

Behind Lady Hydra were five HYDRA soldiers, who were standing one directly in front of the other. These three masked men had their arms held out to their sides at varying clock-hand angles, which gave them the appearance of one individual with numerous arms, a human representation of the mythological creature that HYDRA had modeled itself after.

"Well…"

This was the only word spoken by Madame Hydra to her subordinate, as she stepped off of the elevator platform with two of her armed HYDRA bodyguards behind her.

"The X-Men proved to be far more, resilient, than I had anticipated." Lady Hydra replied, her own masked guise not even turning to face Madame Hydra directly.

While they talked, the two women walked over to the balcony's railing and now overlooked the hundreds of HYDRA soldiers that had been assembled below.

"**Enough of this non-sense**! I want you to organize a full death-squad from our best people and finish this." Madame Hydra quickly snapped in response, as she now delivered her steely decree to her second-in-command, "And this time, there will be no underestimations. You are free to use more obvious methods, even if it means slaughtering any and all who dare to oppose us, or those who just happen to get in our way!

With that, Lady Hydra held up her right hand, and made a simple hand gesture to the men and women gathered down below. Springing to attention, these HYDRA soldiers all stood very rigidly and quietly, before they turned and began to move out to various areas all over the hangar in straight, military-file lines. Lady Hydra then took to the air and flew over the balcony's rail, landing down on the hangar floor some forty-feet below in one fell swoop, with a loud 'click' from the spiked-heels of her boots hitting the hard concrete below.

While Lady Hydra went to go over their attack strategy with all of the battalion leaders, Madame Hydra watched as this latest chain of events that she had set in motion now worked itself towards a most violent culmination, one which in part was meant to settle a personal grudge on her part.

"You can change your name and call yourself John Logan, Emilio Garra…whatever you wish. But, yours is a face that has remained unchanged after all of these years, one that continues to haunt me even to this day. I recognized it immediately, when I saw your picture in that news report about your marriage into one of Japan's most-favored families." Madame Hydra was saying to herself, as she watched the HYDRA strike-force that was assembling below, bearing witness to her own mighty legion as they prepared to move out and do her bidding.

"Old debts will be settled this day, and I vow to destroy everything and everyone that you hold dear for what you did to me! This, I swear…"

**……………………………………………………**

Location: _Tokyo, Japan- Tokyo Detention Facility_

Located near the _Ayase_ subway station is this huge confinement complex, where those guilty of a myriad of criminal offenses committed within the Tokyo Metropolitan area are brought to. It is also here, where those accused of more serious crimes are held until their trials. And, since the time allotted for inmates' to receive and meet with their lawyers and other outside visitors had come to an end hours ago, lockdown procedures had already been instituted in preparation of another long night for the jail's population.

But for one inmate, visiting hours once again came with a most unexpected meeting at this late hour of the night, as he was escorted by a guard into one of the jail's interrogation rooms. And, while he fully expected to find a fresh round of questioning from overzealous detectives desiring to pump him for more information regarding his intricate underworld dealings and connections, Kenuichio Harada was thoroughly surprised, almost to the point of being stunned, at the individuals who awaited him in this visitation cell.

Strapped to Harada's right-arm and shoulder as he entered the room was a neural inhibitor, which consisted of two metallic braces that were connected together by a fairly sophisticated computerized-device that wrapped around and ran the length of his arm. The purpose of this mechanism was to block The Silver Samurai's mutant ability to channel a tachyon-field around solid objects, thus making them virtually indestructible and giving him a possible means with which to escape.

"(Oh, it is you. The thief and the animal.)" Harada scoffed at Wolverine and Gambit, as he came into the interrogation room dressed in a plain, dark-blue inmate's jumpsuit and saw these two men not-so patiently waiting for him.

"Nice t'be seein' you too, Sammy." Gambit sarcastically replied first, as he sat in one of the chairs in the room, now wearing his black leather uniform and matching black and brown-trimmed trench coat.

"(This visit is over.)" Harada now said to the guard, as he turned back and motioned for him to open the sliding steel door, so that he could be taken back to his jail-cell.

"**You ain't goin' anywhere, not until I get some answers**!" Wolverine, who was also in his sleeveless, black leather-uniform, shouted. Wolverine shot up from his chair and pushed the large round table, which he and Gambit were seated around, over a few feet across the concrete floor.

For Wolverine, it had been simple enough for him to arrange this unscheduled meeting, given that his wife-to-be had considerable clout with Tokyo's Police Commissioner General, and that he himself had also lent Sunfire and the local authorities a helping hand a number of times since his return to Japan a few months ago.

"What are you barking about? You low-bred, ill-mannered, gaijin cur!" Harada vehemently spewed his response, as he turned back around from the room's exit and acknowledged Wolverine's words to him.

"What I'm talkin' about is you hirin' those thugs to try 'n kill your sister tonight!" An emotionally charged Wolverine further elaborated.

"I have no idea what it is that you are rambling about." Harada responded, as he came back over and took a seat in a chair close to where the table was now sitting. Harada was now also trying to shake the general feeling of nausea and disorientation that this power-inhibitor wrapped around his arm constantly caused him.

"You're lyin'. And, I wanna know what kinda deal you struck with HYDRA to get them to pull off this hit for you?" Logan said accusatively, as he had serious doubts to Harada's non-involvement in what had happened.

"Believe what you will, but I have arranged no attempt on my half-sister's life." Harada calmly explained, "Take a look around you, simpleton. If I were capable of ordering anyone to do anything, do you not think the first thing that I would have them do would be to free me from this place?"

"Well, all I know is someone awful resourceful, and with a whole lotta motivation helped set this up. And, it's mighty funny when you consider the timin'. Seein' as how it happened right before me and Mariko're supposed to get married, and the fact that might one day throw a major monkey-wrench into your claim on leadership of the Clan Yashida." Logan pointed out to him.

"Everything that I have done, I have done for the benefit of the Clan." Harada replied, his patience wearing thin in regards to these accusations, especially since they were being thrown at him from possibly the one person he despised most in this world.

"Your only reason for doin' anything is to help yourself, ya selfish bastard!" Logan sharply remarked to him, which drew a small laugh from Harada.

"Killing my sister would only serve to hurt the Clan right now. Without a clear and acknowledged leader, it would only descend into chaos and infighting for control, and that is not what I want. When the day comes I am able to assume my place at its head, I want the Clan to be fully operational, not a tattered mess. And as it stands, I am indebted to my sister for her sparing my life, so she has nothing to fear from me.

But you, I owe you nothing.

If I were going to hire HYDRA, or whoever it is that you are alleging me of being in collusion with to kill someone, your name would be the one at the top of that list!" Harada bitingly replied to Logan, as the neural inhibitor's effect on him were not helping with what was already his usually discontented temperament.

"Yeah, just like those 'dangerous' Hand ninja's o' yours that you sent after us." Logan mockingly reminded him, which drew an even louder laugh from Harada.

"Fool, those ninja's that you defeated were not the Hand. Not, the true Hand." Harada mysteriously said to Logan.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Logan inquired of him, as he now sat directly across the table from Harada during this heated conversation between them, and took note of the still visible scar that his claws had etched into the left side of Harada's face during their last duel.

"To answer your question, the true Hand have abilities and expertise that delve deeply into the dark arts. Those ninja's that you, and that vagabond sitting beside you fought, were simply a novice splinter-sect from their organization, nothing more than mere foot-soldiers who had hired their services out to whoever was willing to pay their price." Harada revealed to Logan and Gambit.

"Then, you can tell the Hand, HYDRA, and whoever else you wanna throw our direction that they're more than welcome to keep comin', and I'll keep sendin' what's left of 'em back to you in little disposable bags. Just like I shoulda done with you when I had the chance!" Logan once again shouted, his emotions now starting to get the best of him.

"The reason that you did not perform your duty and kill me is because you are a true coward, allowing yourself to be dictated to by a woman. So, do not come here in some vain attempt to assert what little is left of your manhood by threatening me!" An angry Keniuchio Harada blasted back, as he now stood back up from his chair, which caused a now irate Logan to do the same, "Jail or not, you do not scare me."

Logan and Harada then faced each other and ominously stared the other down in silence, the seething hatred and animosity between them having escalated to a point that it seemed to be almost tangible. After a few moments of this had passed, Harada then spoke again.

"(I have grown weary of this conversation.)" Harada told Logan and Gambit, as he then turned back around to the guard behind him, and was promptly led out of the interrogation room, leaving just his visitors in there. This Samurai, though shackled and perhaps even defeated, had shown them that he had certainly yet to be broken.

"So, you believe Sammy or what?" Gambit asked Logan, as he now stood up from his chair as well.

"I don't know what to believe at this point." An obviously frustrated Logan replied, as he stood and watched as the huge metal-door in front of them slid closed.

"We headin' back t'de hospital then?" Gambit further inquired, as the two men turned around towards another exit on the other side of the interrogation room, where they were buzzed out by another jail guard.

"Not yet, I still intend on gettin' to the bottom of this." Logan replied, as he smiled and looked over at Gambit, while they continued down one of the detention centre corridors together, "You up for a drink Cajun, on me?"

And while Logan had every intention of the two of them paying a visit to one of Tokyo's more seedy drinking establishments tonight, the truth of the matter was that filling up on cheap alcohol wasn't the main motivation driving Logan's latest decision.

**………………………………………………………**

Location: _Tokyo, Japan- Upper-Class Meguro District_

Following preliminary tests and toxicology reports on the substance that had been released from the gas canisters planted inside of the club in the Ginza district, it was determined that the gas' aerial potency had remained fairly low thanks to the X-Men's quick thinking. And, since everyone exposed to the toxin had been responding so well to the antidote that had been administered to them, Sunfire and the Tokyo police made the decision in the middle of the night to move Mariko and her guests' back to her high-rise penthouse in the city's Meguro district. Here, the authorities would be able to establish a more effective security perimeter, and a personal physician would remain on hand in the off-chance that anyone began to have any adverse reactions to their treatment.

While Scott, Alison, Ororo, and Kurt soon went to sleep off the anti-toxin's effects in the guest rooms that were located on the top floor of the penthouse, Mariko's younger guests were shown to the additional spare rooms that sat just one floor below. Usually, this area would have been a buzz with gossip and youthful bustling about, but given the circumstances from earlier in the evening, everyone chose to instead follow their elder teammates' example and they also turned in for the night.

With the exception of two, who were among their number.

Kitty's mind was heavy at this late hour, both with the thoughts of what had happened and what had almost happened earlier tonight, which only served to compound on top of the other issues that had been weighing on her for some time now. Unable to sleep, Kitty decided to seek out the company of another who was, if not a kindred spirit, was someone who would certainly listen to her feelings of consternation and would most assuredly relate to what was bothering her.

Rejecting the temptation to instinctively phase through his bedroom door, which she had grown so accustomed to doing, Kitty instead stood in the hallway outside of Peter's bedroom and lightly knocked on the hardwood and rice paper screened-door. Within a minute, the door slid open and in front of her now stood her much larger fellow X-Man, who also happened to be her boyfriend. Peter answered the light-tapping on his door at this early morning hour dressed in just his bare essentials, standing before Kitty now shirtless with just a pair of boxer-shorts on.

Which, Kitty couldn't help but notice, as her eyes unabashedly studied this well-proportioned physique put on display for her.

"_Katya_, is everything alright?" Peter immediately asked Kitty, as he opened the door posthaste.

Peter now carried himself with a sense of urgency, standing in preparation for Kitty to warn him of some new danger or threat, which he would instinctively respond to by once again springing into action as the armored X-Man code-named Colossus.

"Everything's fine. I just wanted to talk, is all." Kitty replied in a low-voice to keep from waking the others on the floor, as she dissuaded Peter's fears with her words and he relaxed just a little bit. Stepping back and motioning for her to join him, Kitty walked by Peter into his bedroom, as he then slid the door back closed behind them.

In the moderately-lit bedroom, Peter watched as Kitty strode past him wearing an exquisitely-stitched orange and yellow Kimono-robe, which had tiny and highly-detailed seashell designs sewn into it. While Kitty went and took a seat on the edge of Peter's bed, which was elegantly-crafted and stood just a little more than one-and-half-feet up from the floor, Peter went back over and took a seat in a single chair that was over in a corner of the room, turning and facing Kitty from a distance not too far away.

"I'm sorry if I woke you up." Kitty said to Peter, as she looked in his general direction, but not directly at him.

"It is alright, I wasn't asleep. After what happened earlier, I couldn't really sleep. And, I thought that it was probably a good idea if I remained awake and alert anyways, since most of the team is still feeling the effects of that poison." Peter told Kitty, as he sat back in his chair a little. Peter then picked up a notebook-sized sketchpad that had been laying on the floor next to him and placed on a small desk close by, which revealed to Kitty what he had been busy doing before her arrival, "How are you feeling?"

"Not that great. But, I'm still nowhere near as bad as I was that first time when I accidentally phased through Logan in the Danger Room, and found out the hard way just how bad of an idea that can be when I'm not ready for it." Kitty replied, as she looked up from the floor at Peter directly and was able to crack a small smile now about the incident, a far cry from her reaction back when it had originally happened.

"I remember." Peter was now also able to smile a little, although at the time he and the rest of the student-level X-Men wondered if Kitty would ever stop vomiting from that lesson-learned, "And it appears that Logan and Remy are feeling much better as well, considering the fact that they left from the hospital without telling anyone."

"Knowing Logan, they probably went out somewhere drinking, and are staggering their way back to us as we speak." Kitty now giggled and said, before her expression became slightly more serious in nature, "But, I guess what happened tonight is part of the reason I wanted to come and talk to you."

"What is troubling you?" Peter asked Kitty, as he in these few brief moments recognized that something was amiss with his 'Katya', and didn't hesitate to come over from his chair to sit down on the bed right next to her.

"I've just been thinking, for a while now, about how we've been training to fight and defend a world that, in a lot of cases, would just as soon see us dead. And, I just keep thinking about how the day might come when this dream that we're supposed to be fighting for is gonna cost another life on the team." Kitty honestly told him.

Having helplessly watched as Logan was gunned down right before her earlier in the evening, and despite his very miraculous recovery, it had fully brought this point home for Kitty and had managed to drudge up a number of personal issues for her on the subject.

"You shouldn't start worrying about that again." Peter was saying, as he knew from previous experience just how touchy of a subject that this was for Kitty.

"I'm not worrying, I've pretty much accepted that as a reality of who we are and what we do. It's just…" Kitty was saying, when she came to pause and couldn't find the words to continue.

"Just what?" Peter now curiously asked her, as he snuggly wrapped his massive arm around her smaller frame.

"It's just that there are so many things I want to do, before I die. You know, normal stuff." Kitty explained, wanting to be as straightforward with him as possible and not hold anything inside like before, in spite of the somewhat morbid tone that their conversation had taken, "I keep thinking about what you said to me, back before we went off to fight the Sentinels, about how there would always be other tomorrow's for us. But, between the dangers of being an X-Man, and with you going off to college in the fall, tomorrow isn't always guaranteed. And, I..."

Kitty then paused again, as she sighed and took in another deep breath, before she spoke again.

"And, I think I want one of our tomorrow's to happen here tonight." Kitty semi-blurted out, and by her choice of words, Peter knew exactly what she had meant.

"You are just shaken up by what has happened tonight. In the morning, I'm sure that you will feel differently about this." Peter told her, knowing full well that Kitty's statement was an allusion to them having sex.

"**Piotr Rasputin, don't you dare try to tell me how I feel**! I'm in love with you, and I can tell whether what I'm feeling, whether what I'm wanting, is real or not!" Kitty looked over at Peter with a hurt expression, as she moved away from him across the edge of the bed and shouted at him in a low whisper, "And it's not just some knee-jerk reaction I'm having, it's something I've been thinking about for awhile now. I even went out and bought these when we were still back home, and I kept them with me when I realized there was a real possibility that I actually might need them."

Kitty proceeded to reach into the pocket of her Kimono-robe, where she pulled out a condom that she now laid down on the bed in the space between them.

"Are you certain about this, _Katya_?" Peter asked, as he looked down at the square-shaped object that sat between them, and then looked back up at Kitty.

"I've never been more sure about anything in my life." Kitty softly replied, as she looked away from Peter and down onto the hardwood floor, "But if you're not sure, if you don't feel the same way, then I don't want you to think I'm tryin' to pressure you into anything."

"Talk about a complete role-reversal there." Peter lightly remarked, as he reached over to pull Kitty even closer into him with his left arm and kissed her on her forehead, "But, there is no one in this world that I would rather be with, than with you tonight."

Peter then wrapped both of his arms around Kitty in an enveloping embrace, as Kitty put her hands gently on the sides of his face and the pair sat on the edge of his bed kissing each other in a very sensuous manner.

"You are shaking." Peter pointed out to Kitty, as they took a brief pause from their kiss to catch their collective breaths, and sat together in their tender embrace.

"I guess I'm just a little nervous. I just want our first time together to be…well, to be good." Kitty said, as she flashed him a grin that showed off her barely visible braces, while looking up at Peter with her big, beautiful brown eyes.

"Do not concern yourself with such things. I know it will be." Peter smiled and reassured Kitty, as the two began to kiss again and this time they fell back onto Peter's bed together.

As Peter held Kitty close to him, moving his hands in a slow caressing motion up and down her back, Kitty began to lightly kiss him on his neck before moving down to his upper-body, her auburn-brown hair brushing up ever so slightly against his jaw, his chin, and then his across his chest.

The physical expression of how these two felt for each other quickly intensified, and gave way to a far greater level of intense passion. Emotions, which had been steadily building in the more than eight months since that day when Kitty and Peter first acknowledged their growing affections for one another on a cold, late-winter day while standing next to Lake Baikal in Siberia, were at last turned loose…

**……………………………………………………………………**

Prologue- (To a most final and decisive rematch)

Location: _Tokyo, Japan- Ginza District_

In these pitch-black hours of the early morning, while those in Tokyo who had intended on getting any sleep this night already were, there were others who remained busy with tasks at hand that were of the utmost importance. Such as a lone-figure, who was currently standing atop a rooftop that was adjacent to an exclusive dining club in the city's popular Ginza district. It was here that complete bedlam had erupted earlier in the evening, when an attempted murder gave way to all hell breaking loose. But now, the area was fairly serene and peaceful thanks to the numerous law enforcement officers still in the area, all the while as this lone-wolf conducted an investigation of his own high up above.

Although he was not a member of the Tokyo Police, nor was he with any of Japan's investigative agencies for that matter, he still had little trouble in gaining access to this cordoned-off crime scene area. Possessing a badge with the insignia of the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, or SHIELD for short, were the kind of credentials that could gain a person instant access to just about anywhere.

But, this agent of SHIELD was wearing a most unusual and non-regulation uniform, which consisted of silver Kevlar-mesh material underneath armor-plating that covered a good portion of his body, armor-plating that was made from a special lightweight metal alloy that came in a dulled-bronze colored. This unconventional man standing there now looked through the eyeholes of an even more unusual bronze and black mask that he had on, which was made from the same metal alloy, as he carefully examined every square-inch of the rooftop's surface in an attempt to ascertain exactly who had been behind this attack. He immediately noticed that the advanced-looking weapons strewn about all over the roof appeared to have been cut, or sliced, in half. He also saw that there had been a tremendous amount of blood splattered in numerous splotches all over the rooftop as well, the aftermath of what was an obvious fight up there, and what was a fairly savage one at that.

Just then, his probe of this outdoor space was interrupted by the ringing vibrations of a hi-tech communication device attached to the weapons/utility belt around his waist, flashing to life as it informed him of a now incoming call.

"Agent Zero here." Was his response, his words spoken through a heavy German-accent. After activating the two-way comm-device connected to his belt, he detached it and now held it in his hand, waiting for the visual image of the caller to appear on this small-screen that was currently expanding and opening itself up right in his very palm.

"What have you discovered so far, Maverick?" A voice asked him, which was just as thickly-tinged in a Russian timbre in its own right.

"Well, Natasha, judging by the AIM hardware that was left diced into pieces up here, the multiple shell-casings, and the description of the outfits worn by those unidentified men, who were missing most of their upper-extremities when they were bagged up and taken down to the city morgue, I would say that this was definitely a HYDRA hit." Maverick answered, as he addressed Captain Natasha Romanova, who was the head of SHIELD's European and Greater Asia Command.

Captain Romanova was better known to the rest of the world as the legendary agent-provocateur The Black Widow, and the reports of her famed accomplishments during her days with the KGB, and later with SHIELD, had granted her near mythic-status by now.

"This also confirms the increased intel-chatter that we have picked up regarding heightened terrorist activity in Tokyo and its surrounding province in recent days, and of some renewed HYDRA initiative there." The Black Widow told him, as she spoke to Maverick from behind her desk in her dimmed personal office in SHIELD's Operational and Oversight Command Headquarters, this one having happened to be located in Athens, Greece, "And considering who we may be running up against, it is fortunate that you were able to arrive as quickly as you did."

"Luckily, I just happened to be in the region doing some work in Hong Kong, when I received Agent Carter's communiqué. And you know my slogan, 'Have Gun, Will Travel'." Maverick musingly replied, referring to the black-ops mission that he had just completed, when he was contacted by SHIELD Central in New York City that afternoon about a possible hot-bed of HYDRA activity building in Japan.

"You're a big fan of the old American Westerns I see, _Comrade_?" Black Widow humorously remarked, as the redhead sunk back into her executive-styled leather chair, placing her spiked-heel boots up on the edge of her desk off to the side a little and watching Maverick's rather capricious facial-expressions on the monitor right in front of her.

"More like a case of life imitating art, I imagine." Maverick replied, as he thought briefly about just how long he had been a participant in these cat-and-mouse games over the decades, and not for the first time, wondered if it had perhaps been too long?

"Continue to keep me apprised of whatever else you uncover regarding what HYDRA is up to. I have already dispatched Agent Drew, she and her strike-crew should be arriving within the next few hours to assist you with the mobilizing of our forces already there in Japan. Her vast knowledge and past experience in dealing with HYDRA should also be extremely helpful to you." Black Widow was informing Maverick, "In the meantime, see if you can contact this man, he is the fiancé of the wealthy Japanese socialite who was reportedly targeted by HYDRA. And, according to our undercover operatives who were at the hospital where most of the guests were taken following this incident, it appears that he and his friends have been positively ID'd as members of the X-Men, the mutant group that helped SHIELD to liberate the Heli-Carrier some months ago."

With that, the Black Widow cued up an image of the man that she was telling Maverick about, and his heart nearly stopped when he saw whom she referring to.

"I will see if I can locate him, 'Tasha. Maverick, out." Maverick told her, as he abruptly signed off from his comm-device, and then stared for a moment at the remaining image left on its hand-held screen.

It had been some time since Maverick had seen him, yet the face of this man whom he had fought and bled beside still remained the same. Which wasn't much of surprise to Maverick, since they had all undergone those strange and radical experimental procedures so many years ago.

"Well Logan, I hope that you are good at surprise reunions with old friends. Which is ironic, given the place we are both in. It's almost as if we've coming full circle here, from our days together with Team-X." Maverick thought to himself, as he shut off his comm-device and let it hang down in his hand by his side, anticipating this seemingly inevitable meeting between John Logan, and his former war-buddy Christopher North…

**………………………………………………………**

Next Chapter- **Saved by Zero**?


	4. Saved By Zero

Land of the Silver Sun pt. II

Written by Darkstorm5000

Disclaimer: The X-Men and related characters in their various incarnations are the property of Marvel Comics and Marvel Enterprises.

**…………………………………………**

Part 4- Saved By Zero

Location: _Tokyo, Japan- Shinjuku District_

Most come to this section of Tokyo come here for one reason, and one reason only, the prospect of a wild night out. Which, can be a potentially luring draw for those foreign tourists, who will only be here for a limited amount of time. But in the case of two visitors, one just days away from establishing more permanent roots of his own here, have systematically cut a swath through the heart of Central Tokyo's 23 districts towards this area for an all-together different reason.

These two men have been methodically and unrelentingly making their way towards this Yakuza-controlled section of the city, leaving behind a trail of broken tables, broken chairs, and in a few case broken limbs and other body-parts in their wake, all in a search for answers.

"Okay fellas, this is how it's gonna work! You tell me who threw down some major Yen on that HYDRA hit tonight, and you get to keep your teeth!" Wolverine shouted to everyone within earshot in this moderately-sized bar, doing so for the benefit of those who hadn't already taken their leave. It should have become painfully obvious to all patrons that Wolverine wasn't there for a friendly social-call, not after he had overturned a couple of tables and smashed a few chairs in there to underscore his point.

Wolverine's voice now continued to reverberate throughout this seedy and dimly-lit drinking establishment located in the Shinjuku District. Which he had learned through word-of-mouth, and also through broken-jaw, from an individual over in the Ginza District was owned by one of the Yakuza's more powerful families. It served as one of many fronts for their illegal gambling operations located in the bar's expanded and extravagantly refurbished store-room in the back. And at times, was also used as a temporary transit-stop for women being trafficked into the country by the Yakuza, for far more illicit purposes.

After Wolverine made his announcement to those Yakuza members now gathering in there, he proceeded to swiftly hop over a lengthy bar counter to grab the local barkeep, firmly holding him pinned face-up against the long wooden-counter in front of him. While all of this was going on, Gambit had gone and taken a position leaning back up against the bar's counter down at its other end, as he calmly pulled a cigarette out of an interior pocket inside of his black and brown-trimmed leather trench coat and Wolverine continued on with his very hands-on interrogation.

"This is the last time I'm gonna ask! You either tell me what I wanna know, or I can let you spill your guts. Literally." Wolverine now threatened the barkeep, who had managed to remain stoically-silent and extremely uncooperative, despite Wolverine's physical attempts to coerce a response from him.

But that very quickly changed, when the barkeep heard and saw something that finally managed to frighten a reaction out of him.

_**Snikt! **_

Now, staring the barkeep right in his eyes and just a few inches away from his face, were three foot-long metal claws. Which,were capable of cutting through him just as easily as though he were not even standing there.

"(We are only low-level soldiers, we don't know anything. But, even if we did, I wouldn't--)" The barkeep was saying, when he was discourteously interrupted.

"(You're not singing the tune that I want to hear. Which, if memory serves me correct, didn't include any 'If's, And's, or But's' from you.)" Wolverine now snarled and replied to the barkeep in Japanese, as he stood dressed in his own sleeveless, black and bronze-trimmed leather uniform, with one set of his adamantium claws still trained directly on the barkeep.

But, instead of impaling the barkeep with the unforgiving blades protruding out of his hands, Wolverine indulged himself by simply punching him out with his other fist, before turning his attention over to the other Yakuza that were still standing around inside of the bar.

"So, who wants to be the next contestant on…" Wolverine was saying, when he suddenly paused and turned to look down at Gambit, who was still leaning up against the other end of the bar, "Say 'Gumbo', what do they call it over here? Japanese Idol?"

"You mean t'tell me you been over here all these months, and you ain't bothered t'pick up a TV Guide t'find out?" Gambit laughed a little and sarcastically replied, as he shrugged his shoulders in response to Wolverine's question, while reaching over across the counter to now help himself to a generously-poured shot of the bar's finest _Suntory_.

"I guess it kinda slipped offa my 'things-to-do' list." Wolverine replied in a tone that was equally as sarcastic, as he jumped back over across the bar counter and made his way back towards the room's center.

"Well, Gambit may not know anyt'ing when it comes t'what they call amateur-hour over here, but he do know when an amateur's tryin' t'get de drop on him. 'Specially, when I can hear dis _gars_ comin' at me from a mile away." Gambit now remarked, as he felt a presence approaching from behind.

One of the Yakuza-thugs in the bar suddenly sprang up from behind the bar with a medium-sized dagger in hand and proceeded to aim it in Gambit's direction, attempting to stab him in the shoulder. But not to be taken out in such an inept manner, Gambit grabbed the thug's arm, quickly tossed him over his shoulder, and threw him about five feet out in front of him. Gambit sent the thug crashing out into one of the bar's tables, adding yet another mark to the growing list of damaged items in there.

Gambit then took the knife that he had just wrested away from his assailant, flipped it up into the air in front of him once, before promptly snatching it back into his grasp. Then, without missing a beat as he continued puffing on his cigarette, Gambit laid the knife on the bar's counter beside him and went back to coolly finish the drink that he had just poured for himself.

Meanwhile, having now gathered a wide assortment of weapons that included bats, chains, and knives in the interim, the remaining Yakuza in the bar had prepared themselves for a physical altercation with these two apparent troublemakers, who themselves were more than ready for another fight. Without another word being uttered, a brawl instantly broke out in the middle of the bar room.

With a gang of two, taking on a gang of more than twenty.

And in spite of those overwhelming odds, the result after not even five minutes worth of fighting was the same as it had been previously, when Wolverine and Gambit had found themselves in this almost identical situation earlier on in the evening.

"After doin' dis at four other places before we got here, I figured dat you'd be startin' t'tire yo'self out by now?" Gambit now said to Wolverine, as they now stood amidst a sea of mangled tables and chairs in the middle of the bar, along with injured Yakuza gangsters strewn about across the bar-room floor.

"Nah, I'm just gettin' warmed up. Guess havin' your insides ripped apart by a hollow-point'll do that for a fella." Wolverine avowed, as he stood and surveyed the bar to see if anyone in there besides him and Gambit were still conscious, "And now that I think I've made my point in here, I'm gonna ask again. Anyone o' you wanna volunteer and tell me about the joker who put the hit out on my fiancée? Or, do I have to completely turn this bitch out, and let the headbustin' keep on until I've cracked every skull, window, and wall in this joint before I convince someone that they wanna be helpful after all?"

"And he's tellin' de truth too." Gambit now sarcastically remarked to everyone else in the bar, as he went back over to the bar counter to pour himself yet another drink, carrying a broken-off wooden chair-leg with him in his hand, "Last place we was in didn't even have a front door left standin' by de time we got through. Didn't have one left standin' out back either, although we wasn't supposed t'know about dat one t'begin wit'."

While Gambit proceeded to take a sip from his glass, Wolverine in the meantime went back over and picked the barkeep up from the floor, whom he had punched out earlier. Having fingered him for being the Yakuza lieutenant in charge of this particular operation, Wolverine wanted to see if he had indeed changed his mind about providing him with the information that he had wanted? But, Wolverine was all-too prepared to beat those answers from the barkeep if he had to, as he now cocked his right-hand back in a manner threatening to once again hit the barkeep in the face, if he didn't talk.

That is, until Wolverine was stopped by an unexpected voice speaking out to him from a darkened corner in the bar room.

"There are far more efficient methods, with which to uncover the answers that you seek, _Herr Logan_."

"Kurt, dat you?" Gambit now asked aloud from the other side of the bar-room, as he looked over in the general direction where the comment had come from.

But even though the speaker did have a heavy German-accent, and was also able to conceal himself in dimly-lit spaces like Nightcrawler, Gambit knew something definitely didn't sound right to him.

"Nah, I know the Elf's scent and voice too well. Whoever this guy is, he ain't blue or fuzzy." Wolverine corroborated for Gambit, as his hyper-senses now allowed him to make out this shadowy-figure standing over in the corner, and he saw that this person was wearing a unique manner of lightweight body-armor that consisted of a very dark-bronze metallic plating, which was strategically placed over a gray mesh-material that covered much of his torso.

But beyond that, Wolverine marveled at the fact that this individual was able to slip up on both him and Gambit at the same time, without either of them noticing. Which was no mean feat, when one considered that there were few people in the world skilled enough to pull it off.

"Guy sho' knows how t'make an entrance, I'll give him dat." Gambit now commented from over at the bar-counter.

"Yeah, and he also knows a thing or two about maskin' his scent from me. And with everything that's already happened tonight, that sure as hell ain't endearin' me none to him." Wolverine growled, as he was unnerved by that fact and popped the adamantium claws out of his hands, now in full expectation of an attack from this mysterious individual.

"There won't be any need for that." The cloaked-figure replied, as he stepped out into the open to introduce himself, holding up a badge in his hand that had an insignia of a black eagle with its wings spread out and was completely encircled within a gold-colored background, "My name is Maverick, Agent of SHIELD. I've come here to help you."

"Uh-huh, sure thing 'bub'. And we should trust you becaauuusse…" Wolverine now posed to Maverick, with his claws still pointed out at him.

Wolverine was still very much skeptical of Maverick's assertion of being there to assist them, although he observed that Maverick did have a SHIELD emblem on the shoulder of his uniform, which matched the one on the badge in his hand.

"Because, I think that you could use all of the help you can get at the moment." Maverick replied, as he put his badge away, "I was sent here because it appears that HYDRA, Madame Hydra specifically, is attempting to secure a prominent position for herself within Japan's criminal underworld. Which in turn has made a rather valuable target out of you, your fiancée, and your friends', since I have learned that your lives have become her admission fee to join. And that is why have been trying to locate you for much of the night and this morning. But after all of you disappeared from the hospital, tracking you down has not been such an easy task."

"Which brings up a good point. How'd you manage to find us and dig up all that info anyways?" Wolverine continued inquiring, as he finally retracted his claws back into his hands.

"I asked." Maverick responded simply.

"That's the same thing we been doin'." Wolverine remarked.

"I asked, nicely." Maverick replied, now with a small smirk visible right below his bronze and black mask.

"I see your point." Wolverine whimsically acknowledged.

"And, I knew where to go to do the asking." Maverick continued.

Then, almost as if it were on cue, the door to the bar-room flung open. In walked a woman who had very short, jet-black hair and who was dressed in a midnight-colored, skin-tight full leather bodysuit. A woman who, as it would turn out, was not a stranger to some of those individuals currently inside of the bar.

"Yukio?" Gambit now muttered, as he nearly fell off of his barstool and did spill some of his drink onto the counter when his eyes made contact with her. Which was something to note, especially since it was rare to see Gambit surprised or caught off-guard by much of anything.

"I'm glad that you remembered, Lebeau-san." Yukio replied, although her tone conveyed a fair amount of hostility in her voice.

"You two know each other?" Wolverine now looked over and asked Gambit.

"Yeah, you could say dat." Gambit smilingly answered, as he nodded over in Yukio's direction, "De lady's a casual acquaintance of mine."

"You have a very strange definition of 'casual'. Particularly, since it was my gang and I who helped to provide you refuge the last time I saw you, when the Hand were looking to detach your head from the rest of your body some months ago." Yukio, who led 'The Wild Ones', Tokyo's own premiere gang of thieves now reminded Gambit, "I would think you to consider us to be something much closer than that. The two of us, especially."

"Well, you know, I s'ppose t'ieve's like us, we gotta stick together an' all." Gambit humorously said to her, continuing with his attempts to charm a smile out of Yukio, but only receiving an even colder response from her.

"When word got to me about two gaijin who were out to tear the Yakuza a new one tonight, I should have expected to find you in the middle of it. Seeing as you and trouble apparently have a close, working relationship." Yukio scathingly remarked to Gambit, as she stood with her arms folded over in front of her.

"C'mon, you turnin' my brown-eyes blue." Gambit now further quipped to Yukio, "So, what brings you 'round these parts anyways?"

"My people informed me that Agent Maverick was asking for our help in locating those two individuals who had declared war on the Yakuza. And, even though I have little love for the law, or for anyone who enforces it, I have even less for the likes of men such as The Silver Samurai and those in HYDRA." Yukio explained, as she and the Yakuza had generally been at odds with one another and had their fair share of disagreements over the years. Which more often than not, ended with someone or something from the other party getting blown apart, "So I decided to accompany him personally to seek you two out, since any enemy of the Yakuza is certainly a friend of mine. In most cases, anyways."

"Why don't you join us then, seein' as how we're about to go 'n put a major hurtin' on all of the above?" Wolverine smiled and offered Yukio.

"Thanks, but another time perhaps." Yukio cordially declined, as she turned towards the door and then looked back at Wolverine, shooting him a warm and friendly expression.

But before she left, Yukio turned and looked over at Gambit, giving him a shoulder that was cold enough to make it seem as though Iceman could have been standing right behind her. And with that, Yukio made her departure from the bar and was gone.

Like a thief in the night.

"So, what's de plan now?" Gambit asked Wolverine, as he stood up from the bar and finished his drink, while they and Maverick now followed Yukio's example by also heading outside to a sunrise that was less than an hour away.

"When I talked to Shiro after we got through with Harada, he said everyone had gone back to the penthouse to finish recoverin'. So, I figure we'll head there too and regroup with the gang, and then plan our next move." Wolverine replied, as he and Gambit were making their way across the street that ran in front of the bar, heading towards a gray Nissan Z sports-car parked by the curb.

Then, Wolverine stopped and suddenly turned back around to speak to Maverick.

"Say bub, you, uh, need a lift outta here?" Wolverine very uncharacteristically offered to this stranger, and wasn't quite sure himself as to why.

"Thanks, but I have someone coming for me. And, I suggest that you and your friends' be prepared, Madame Hydra is not likely to give up so easily. I'm sure that she fully intends to collect on that hefty bounty now placed on all of your heads'." Maverick replied, as he pulled the comm-device from his kevlar-belt and pushed a small button on the side of it.

"Thanks for the heads-up. Stay loose there, Rico." Wolverine told him, as he and Gambit ran and jumped into the convertible car, peeling out and leaving Maverick behind in this Shinjuku neighborhood right at the break of day.

As he went and stood in a darkened-alley near the bar to await the SHIELD air-transport that would arrive in minutes to come and take him back to their base, Maverick thought about the fact that Logan obviously hadn't recognized him, which was something that he had been preparing himself for.

Maverick thought back to a few years ago, when he had unexpectedly run across another one of his former teammates from their days with the CIA, Victor Creed. Like Logan, Creed also seemed to have no earthly idea who Maverick was, and barely seemed to be cognizant of his own identity.

No longer was Creed the charismatic and boisterous man that Maverick had once known, having now been reduced to nothing more than his codename.

A Sabretooth.

An animal.

Who appeared to be almost incapable of independent thought, and was content with simply allowing his brute strength and muscle to be hired out to others. Maverick even recalled reading a report a recently that mentioned Creed's name among a list of others, who were all somehow involved in activities with the mutant-terrorist Magneto.

But, Maverick figured that perhaps this was part of some form of divine karma or penance that each of them was now being forced to serve out, for all of their parts in helping Stryker to set up that damned Weapon-X program in the first place. Such as an old friend, for example, somehow managing to remember the nickname that he used to call Maverick by during their time with the ultra-covert Team-X, but no longer left with the ability to remember much of anything else about that time in which they had spent together.

**……………………………………………….…………………**

Location: _Tokyo, Japan- Meguro District_

As the first light of day broke, its new rays shone brightly and now shimmered through the penthouse windows of the _Omonaru_ high-rise building in this affluent neighborhood. But, its radiance still couldn't compare with the beaming elation of two individuals, who were currently occupying one of its upper-level guest suites.

"Do you know what I have been thinking?" Peter Rasputin asked, as he now sat on the side of his low-riding bed and faced towards the window.

"Hmmm, that your girlfriend gets really turned on by life or death situations?" Kitty Pryde, who was all smiles at the moment, giggled and responded to her boyfriend's inquiry. She now stood in front of a full-length, floor mirror that rested upon a tall wooden easel-stand close to the window in his bedroom, as she was busily retying her Kimono robe while trying to also fix her hair.

"No, I was actually thinking about how nice it was to wake up with you beside me, in my arms." Peter sat and told her.

"Yeah, it was nice, wasn't it?" Kitty now stopped what she was doing, to turn around and acknowledge Peter's affectionate remark.

Just then, as Kitty had turned back to once again face the mirror and finish making herself look presentable, both she and Peter heard an unexpected knock at the bedroom's door.

"Peter?" Both he and Kitty heard a voice semi-call out through the paper-screened door, and they immediately recognized it as being Rogue's.

Peter, who was still in just his boxers, stood up and went over to a nearby chair to grab a blue and white cotton Yukata robe and put it on before going to answer the door, giving Kitty just enough time to finish with her own wardrobe readjustments.

"Is everything okay?" Peter asked, as he slid the door open and instantly slipped back into full contingency-mode, while he finished tying his robe together.

"Remy and Logan still aren't back, and Ah was wonderin' if you'd heard…" Rogue was saying to Peter, when she paused in mid-sentence after seeing that Kitty was in there with him.

Rogue just stared at Kitty for a brief moment, and then looked back up at Peter right in front of her before speaking to him again.

"Sooo, Ah'm not interruptin' anything between you two, now am Ah?" Rogue now smirkingly asked of the pair, as she stood leaning up slightly against the wooden frame of the doorway, wearing a white and black Yukata robe of her own.

With Rogue's question now posed to them both, Peter looked back into the room at Kitty. The two then exchanged silently-coy gestures at one another, while Kitty now made her way over towards Peter and Rogue by the door.

"Nope. Nothing at all." Kitty non-chalantly replied to Rogue's inquiry, as she walked past Rogue and Peter out into the hallway, now struggling to contain the smile that had been so evident on her face moments ago, "I…think I'll go see if Jubilee's heard anything."

"She's probably still asleep." Rogue said, as she had pretty much gotten down the sleeping habits of her roommate by now.

"I don't think so, I can hear Walk Idiot Walk playing all the way up here." Kitty observed, as she continued on in the direction towards the not-so-faint sound of music, going past where her and Leyu's guest rooms' were both located.

"Yep, she's definitely up." Rogue laughed out loud, as she now shot a look up at Peter to let him know that she knew something more was going on with him and Kitty than they had let on, even if she didn't quite know what it was yet.

"You gon' have t'repeat dat, so Gambit can get de punch-line too."

With those words now uttered at them from out of the blue, Rogue and Peter turned to see Remy and Logan coming towards them from the opposite end of the hallway.

"Punch-line? Ah'm about ready to punch you out, Swamp-rat!" Rogue replied to Remy's wisecrack, as her fairly cheery demeanor quickly disappeared and she certainly didn't give Remy the warm reception that he had been expecting, "Ah've been up half the night worryin' about you two. Where've you been?"

"We just had to step out for a sec to shake down some lowlifes', and get some answers on who was behind siccin' that hit-chick on us, Darlin'." Logan said and tried to explain to Rogue.

"And, we back now from layin' de smack down on them, so you can stop wit' all de worryin', _Cheré_." Remy smiled and light-heartedly continued, while proceeding over to wrap his arms around Rogue in a tender embrace, as they usually did to greet one another.

"Yeah." Was all that Rogue said in response, as she pulled away from Remy and looked up into his red-on-black eyes with a pained expression on her face.

One could understand Rogue being upset at them for leaving the hospital without telling anyone, since given all of the craziness from earlier in the evening, it would be hard to blame her for being concerned about their safety and their whereabouts. But, Rogue was hurt and angry at them for a reason that cut far deeper than that.

It was because they hadn't thought to include her in their little side-adventure.

After everything that the three of them had been through together, both here and back at home, Rogue felt that they should have known how much she now absolutely lived for that kind of action. And, she had thought that by she would have at least earned that level of respect from Logan and Remy, with regards to her ability to handle herself in a fight. And even though none of these things had actually factored into Logan's rather spontaneous decision at the hospital, it was still Rogue's perception, and perception can more often than not wind up being a person's reality.

Without saying anything else to either of them, Rogue pulled her robe even more tightly around herself as she turned and stormed off down the hallway in the same direction that Kitty had just gone down, now heading towards her own guest room. With Remy in tow behind her, who now wondered how he had struck upon such a sour-streak of late, when it came to him and those of the opposite sex.

Meanwhile, Logan was left in the hallway with Peter by his bedroom doorway. And just as he was about to head off upstairs himself, so that he could inform Scott, Ororo, and the other adults on the penthouse's top-floor of what he and Remy had learned, Logan abruptly stopped dead in his tracks when he picked up a scent.

What made Logan come to a halt was that this other scent was one very familiar him, and the fact that it was somehow inexplicably all over Peter. Not a strange or new scent, but the exact opposite was actually true. And, considering whom it belonged to and just how strong it was, Logan had a pretty good idea of how it had gotten there. He just stood there for a moment and silently eyeballed Peter, looking the young man up and down in a visually scrutinizing manner, before he continued on towards the short staircase at the end of the hallway that led directly upstairs.

Peter, who had no idea why Logan was acting so strangely towards him, was just as unaware that Logan now intended to have a very long and a very serious talk with him on this particular subject, once everything got back to normal.

A short time later, following a concise debriefing, a consensus had been reached by the elder X-Men about their next plan of action. Rather than sit around and wait for HYDRA to strike again, they decided to instead suit up and go on the offensive themselves. The plan was to put an end to this by coordinating a joint-operation with SHIELD and the Japanese authorities to take this fight right back to HYDRA. And as everyone had gathered with the senior-student squad one floor below to outline their strategy, Rogue and Gambit were soon making their way back upstairs more than a half-hour later, curious as to what was keeping Logan?

"Scott said we're about ready to move out, we're just waitin' on you." Rogue said to Wolverine, as she entered the spacious top-floor living room wearing her black and green-trimmed leather uniform, and with Gambit coming in beside her.

"Okay." Wolverine looked back and replied in a fairly mellowed tone, as he stood there with both arms wrapped around Mariko, who herself was dressed in a basic chocolate-frost dress, and had a sheer and see-through, brown long-sleeved sweater worn over it.

The two were sharing an obviously romantic moment, even though, Mariko had just given her future husband a piece of her mind with regards to his disappearance last night at the hospital. Mariko wasn't upset so much by the fact that he had left, as she had gotten used to his rather nomadic tendencies by now. But, she did tell Logan that she would prefer that he take her feelings into consideration, and at the very least tell her when he was going off somewhere first, before deciding to just up and take off like that in the future.

But, just as Logan was about to head across the living room to join Rogue and Gambit so that they could depart, everybody in the room suddenly froze and stopped right where they were, when the sound of multiple explosions occurring simultaneously could be heard from downstairs and also outside, which rocked the entire building.

With Madame Hydra having pulled out all of the stops, she had sent an attack force that she believed more than capable of destroying all of the X-Men. And while the building that the X-men were staying in had been secured by local and national police forces, they were outgunned and were vastly outnumbered by this HYDRA death-squad totaling more than two hundred men and women.

"Cyke, what the hell's goin' on down there?" Wolverine asked, after he had taken his earpiece communicator out of his uniform pocket and put it on.

"_Someone set off some kinda explosive inside of the building's elevator shaft._" Cyclops replied to all of the X-Men over his comm-link, "_I want everyone to fall back into defensive positions, it looks like we've got incoming_."

And by incoming, Cyclops couldn't have been much more accurate.

What sounded like a supersonic boom ripping through the air, followed by the roar of a jet outside speeding towards them grew extremely loud, and did so in a very short amount of time. Without warning, one of the exterior windows on the top-floor totally and completely imploded inward along with its surrounding wall, sending shattered glass and concrete into the room towards Wolverine, Mariko, Gambit, and Rogue.

Once the initial dust had settled, the four now saw that standing in the resultant debris inside of the penthouse wearing a tight-green, and provocatively revealing, leather outfit was none other than masked villainess herself, Lady Hydra. Although to be accurate, she was actually hovering about a foot above the living room's floor with her posture at a slightly pivoted stance. She had one fist held out to her side down by her waist, which had the added effect of giving Lady Hydra the appearance of being every bit as dangerous and as powerful as she truly was.

"Well, well, it looks like my ducks've been lined up in a row for me, so I can knock them down all at once." Lady Hydra flashed them a sinister smile and said, after having flown through the window like a superhuman battering-ram.

"More like, the two of us are about to finish what we started last night!" Wolverine snarled back at her, as he popped his claws out of his hands and was more than ready for a rematch.

Meanwhile, Lady Hydra surveyed the room and prepared herself to complete the mission given to her by Madame Hydra, a mission that included her eliminating those individuals principally responsible for the collapse of the Jigoku Criminal Dynasty.

Which, were namely these four individuals who were currently in the room with her.

**…….…………………………………………………..**

In the meantime, the rest of the X-Men had become engaged in closed-quarters combat with a group of more than two-dozen of HYDRA soldiers' that had been drawn from Madame Hydra's elite Tiger Division. Soldiers', who had managed to slip past the building's security forces by journeying through the city's sewers and subterranean passageways and then up the building's stairs, all while the police were occupied with another much larger HYDRA attack-squad outside. And while the amount of force being used may have seemed to be a bit of overkill, Madame Hydra was taking no chance of there being another failure this time, not when she was so close to acquiring a power base sufficient enough to allow her to take complete control over HYDRA world-wide.

As two of the more powerful and most experienced members' of the team, Storm and Cyclops were more than ready, willing, and able to deal with these armed intruders. The both of them hurled small bolts of lightning and short bursts of optic energy at the HYDRA soldiers', who were in turn exchanging gunfire with them. Storm and Cyclops had taken it upon themselves to attempt to lure as many of these soldiers' as they could down one of this sub-floor's corridors and away from the other X-Men. And while they were for the most part successful, there were still a few armed HYDRA troops that remained behind, intent on finishing off the rest of the X-Men's numbers close by.

Backed into one of the bedroom suites' Nightcrawler, who had been identified to them as being one of the more dangerous members amongst the X-Men, decided to make his stand there against a handful of HYDRA mercenaries here by himself. He used his athletic prowess in conjunction with his mutant power to teleport and stay one step ahead of them.

Employing his quick chain-teleport technique, Nightcrawler popped in and out all around the room, punching and kicking out a half-dozen men in roughly the same number of seconds, while managing to avoid the lethal projectiles being shot at him. But, a couple more HYDRA troops had managed to enter the room while Nightcrawler was otherwise occupied, and were now preparing to take him down while he had his back turned to them and wasn't looking. Luckily for Nightcrawler though, he had someone else that was watching his back for him.

Nightcrawler swiftly spun back around, when he heard the almost humming sound of energy being discharged and striking a target. Recognizing the familiar sound and the glowing ruby-red light aura that had hit these soldiers' from behind, Nightcrawler immediately went to thank his teammate.

"Nice shooting, and timing, Cyclops." Nightcrawler said to the X-Men's first in command, as he stood dressed in his black leather uniform that was trimmed in midnight-blue.

"Thanks, but it wasn't him. Not directly anyways." A definitely female voice said in response. Once the soldiers' had been knocked unconscious by the low intensity stun-blast, they fell forward to reveal who it actually was that had hit them from behind.

"Alison?" Nightcrawler asked in a very surprised tone, as he saw her standing there in the bedroom's doorway, her eyes radiantly aglow with what appeared to be a saturating orangish-red candescence.

"Yep, it's me." Dazzler replied, as she stood before Nightcrawler dressed in a black and powder-blue trimmed leather uniform, which was sleeveless and had the mid-riff area exposed.

It was an X-Men uniform that Jubilee had put together for Alison, more for fun than anything. Mainly, it had been designed for Alison to have something to wear while she was working out back home at the mansion, and neither she nor Jubilee had any real expectations that Alison would ever have to put it on in an actual combat situation. But always being of a constantly-prepared and prudent mind, Scott had brought Alison's uniform along with them to Japan.

Just in case.

"Although, I'm sure Scott'll appreciate the praise and all, I do have to take a little credit for the assist here too. This's just one of the things the two of us came up with during all that extra time we spent training together in the Danger Room." Dazzler finished explaining to Nightcrawler, after having shown off her vastly improved skills for him, "Scott showed me how to use my light laser-blast so that I could create an optic-blast almost like his."

"Then, I thank you both. Now, let me go see if I can locate a few reinforcements for us, _Fraulein_." Nightcrawler smilingly replied as he looked over towards the window, an instant before he teleported over right next to it, and then disappeared from out of the room all together.

But once he was outside and down below on street-level, Nightcrawler immediately realized that the help he had been in search of might be short in coming. The combination of Japan's National Police Agency, The Clan Yashida's bodyguards, and Sunfire's own government operatives currently had their hands full, as HYDRA had initiated a massive ground and air offensive against them in the interim.

While these numerous HYDRA mercenaries, who were garbed in green, yellow, and red had the law enforcement and security officers pinned down by their machine gunfire in an old-fashioned shootout with a hi-tech twist, their aerial compatriots' rocketed by overhead. They were piloting, what appeared to be, jet-propulsed mechanized hang-gliders' equipped with large caliber rounds, which were also being aimed and fired down onto the police below. Nightcrawler observed that anyone unlucky enough to have been out on the street when the fighting broke out, whether civilian or law enforcement, had now taken cover wherever cover could be found. Which, Nightcrawler also wisely did himself, as a car parked close by was detonated by a HYDRA rocket-propelled grenade fired from a shoulder-mounted launcher.

Everyone not with a gun in their hands hid behind cars, police armored-vehicles, or building walls, all with the exception of one now frightened and understandably confused little girl, who couldn't have been any more than six or seven years old. She had wandered away from her mother and father before the fighting had started, and Nightcrawler now bore witness as this little girl darted across the street in a desperate search for her parents, and was about to unsuspectingly run headlong into the crossfire of oncoming bullets that was being traded between the two sides.

**………………………………………………**

While the streets of Tokyo's Meguro District had quickly come to resemble a battlefield, the penthouse-levels of the _Omonaru_ building up above had also escalated into a war-zone all of its own. Particularly, with regards to the top-floor, where a brawl of the first-order had now broken out in earnest.

"Let it be known Gambit don't discriminate none, and dat he always more than willin' t'cut de deck and deal out t'de _femmes_!" Gambit loudly declared, as he hurled two fistfuls of bio-kinetically charged playing cards from out of his trench coat, sending them across the large living room right at Lady Hydra to help get this fight underway.

But to Gambit's chagrin, Lady Hydra easily dodged the cards that he had thrown at her by hovering around the room, maneuvering and contorting her body in mid-air to avoid their connection. As Gambit now pulled out his reinforced metal-staff and extended it in anticipation of employing a new battle tactic against her, Wolverine jumped out in front of his teammate to make his move own against the would-be assassin, running and launching himself through the air at her.

Having seen the night before just how deadly Wolverine could be with those razor-sharp claws of his that were now extended, Lady Hydra concentrated her efforts on making sure to avoid them as well. A task, which she was able to accomplish by relying on her own lightning-fast reflexes.

After pulling off an impressive series of front and side-somersaults, which were timeously carried out in tandem with a few rear back hand-plants that let her stay just out of the reach of Wolverine's slashing blades, Lady Hydra was able to bide her time and wait until she saw an opening to go on the offensive herself.

Using her incredible aerial speed and agility, Lady Hydra nimbly slipped right by Wolverine in the middle of his continuing attempts to land a cutting blow against her, marvelously gliding underneath his swiping attacks mere inches above the floor. Now employing her own exorbitant super-strength, Lady Hydra firmly grabbed Wolverine around one of his legs and picked him up off of the floor, as she continued to hover a few inches right above it. She then tossed Wolverine through the air with tremendous force and right in Gambit's direction, now sending both X-Men violently-crashing into a wall on the far side of the living room, and seemingly knocking them out of the fight for the time being at least.

"Now, to the main objective of my mission, Ms. Yashida. Your execution." Lady Hydra said, as she flew straight upward and did a front flip in mid-air, before landing easily on her feet to now look right at Logan's beautiful and graceful fiancée.

"No, you better just back off!" Rogue shouted back at her, as she jumped over in between Lady Hydra and Mariko.

Rogue now pulled her shortened katana blade from out of the scabbard strapped to her back, the very same sword that Gambit had given to her as a gift when they were last here in Japan. But, as Rogue drew her sword and held it out in front of her with both hands in a combat-ready stance, Lady Hydra was able to quickly snatch it from Rogue's hands with little effort, looking down at the weapon to examine it for a moment.

Right before she used her inordinate strength to completely bend the sword out of shape in one of her leather-gloved hands.

"Out of my way little girl!" Lady Hydra hissed, as she tossed the sword off to the side, and then swiftly backhanded Rogue like a rag-doll over into some furniture located in the center of the living room, overturning a lounging chair and small wooden end-table as a result, all the while Lady Hydra continued her slow and persistent march towards Mariko.

But, while all of this had been going on, Mariko had gone over and taken a more traditional Samurai's sword off of one of the walls, which had adorned the room as an ornate decoration, and she now prepared to use the lengthy-blade to defend herself. It was the first time this family heirloom would be used in such a capacity in generations, dating back to its last use in battle right before the Imperial Japanese Army and modern weaponry rose to prominence in the country, forever replacing both these swords and the Samurai class who had employed them.

"Honestly, do you think that thing'll stop me from snapping your neck like a twig?" Lady Hydra smiled and asked, as she snapped her fingers to accentuate her remark.

"Perhaps not, but it certainly won't be from a lack of effort on my part." Mariko solemnly replied, as she stood there steadily with the longsword in both of her hands.

"Well then, here's an 'A' for effort from yours truly, M'iko!" Wolverine yelled out, as he had shaken off any wooziness that he may have been experiencing after being tossed across the room by Lady Hydra, and now had finally managed to sneak up from behind to get the drop on her.

True to his words, Wolverine used every bit of strength that he could muster to almost simultaneously plunge both sets of his claws into the back and into the side of Lady Hydra, as he proceeded to lift her up a few inches off of the floor into the air with them. Now, Lady Hydra was left to experience a wicked sensation of her own, one which she hadn't felt in some years.

Pain.

As Lady Hydra cried out in agony from Wolverine's ferocious attack, she came to quickly understand that despite her possessing nigh-invulnerability, it was still not enough to keep her body from being injured by blades forged of pure adamantium, the indestructible substance which Madame Hydra had informed her that Wolverine's claws and skeleton had been endowed with. And that realization only served to enrage her, as she turned and punched Wolverine directly in the face as hard as she could, sending a resounding reverberation throughout the entire room that either cracked or shattered the majority of its windows.

Lady Hydra's unbelievably-forceful blow managed to knock Wolverine down hard to the floor and freed her from the unforgiving impalement of his claws, but her right-hand now also felt a slight tinge of numbness from striking a jaw that was also laced with adamantium. She now knew that she would have to finish Wolverine first, as he without question posed the greatest danger to her.

"Your bones may be unbreakable, but let's see how the rest of you deals with not getting any oxygen after I crush your windpipe!" An infuriated Lady Hydra now shouted, as she quickly made her way over to Wolverine, who was still laying on the floor. Lady Hydra's back and side were still bleeding from his puncturing attack, although just like Wolverine's healing factor, her own accelerated metabolism was now doing its best to cope with such a serious injury.

Lady Hydra came and stood over a barely-conscious Wolverine, and then ruthlessly drove the reinforced spiked-heels of her boots down into his forearms. Breaking the surface of his skin, Lady Hydra dug her stiletto-boots deep into Wolverine's flesh, doing so in a precise area just above each of his wrists that gave her enough leverage to prevent him from further using his claws against her in a threatening manner.

Even though Wolverine wouldn't dare give Lady Hydra the satisfaction of physically displaying just how much pain he was currently in, Mariko now saw what was being done to him and knew that he was being hurt immensely by this mad-woman. Without having to even think about it, Mariko instinctively ran over to attack her beloved's assailant with the sword that she had grabbed ahold of earlier, ignoring whatever fear that she may have been feeling at that moment.

But true to Lady Hydra's words, the sword's blow had absolutely no effect, as Mariko connected with it across her shoulder blades.

Lady Hydra looked back out of the corner of her eye and slapped Mariko away with the same amount of effort a person would use to swat a fly, sending Logan's fiancée along with the now slightly-bent blade crashing into another nearby wall. And now, Lady Hydra was left to finish off Wolverine, as she knelt down and soon had her hands tightened into a vice-like grip around his throat. All while Mariko, Gambit, and Rogue were left lying unconscious on the floor in various areas of the living room, which was well on its way to being demolished by these individuals at a fairly astounding rate.

Well, it appeared that at least Mariko and Gambit were still pretty much unconscious at any rate.

"Unnnhhh…" Rogue groggily slurred out, as her head lifted up off of the floor and she started to stir once again, having been struck in the sternum by Lady Hydra with enough force to temporarily knock the wind out of her.

Rogue turned over and sat up on the floor, her side aching horribly as though something had possibly been broken, only to now see across the room that the HYDRA villainess had her hands wrapped Wolverine's neck in a vicious attempt to choke the life out of him. Rogue also saw that her sword, which had held such sentimental value to her for obvious reasons, was now lying on the floor close by and was left in the shape of crooked 'U'. She began to wonder just how they were going to stop someone who was as powerful as Lady Hydra apparently was, especially since the other X-Men were otherwise occupied with those HYDRA thugs whom she could also hear shooting up the place downstairs, and now that she herself was without a weapon.

Then it hit Rogue.

While she may have been left without a weapon, she certainly wasn't weaponless. And upon that realization, Rogue prepared herself to take a gamble on the fact that the one weapon still left at her disposal would hopefully be enough to stop Lady Hydra.

Picking herself up from the floor, as she began to slowly limp across the living room towards where Lady Hydra and Logan were, racing through Rogue's mind were thoughts about the great many things that she had learned during her time as a student at Professor Xavier's School for the Gifted. While his goal had been to instill in all of his students' academic knowledge, which would carry them through the rest of their lives long after they had left his school, there were still some life lessons that Professor Xavier had imparted upon his pupils' that simply couldn't be taught from a book. Such as making decisions that, while not necessarily being of the greatest benefit to the one who was making them, could certainly be so to others.

And it was his lessons to them about self-sacrifice that Rogue now drew upon, which was evidenced by her removing the black leather-gloves from both of her hands that were part of her X-uniform, and served to help block the involuntary leeching effects of her mutant powers. Rogue forced herself to confront her own deep-rooted fears about using her mutant powers against another person, and she now made a decision, a choice, to use them for the welfare of her friends.

**……………………………………………………………**

As multiple battles raged on both inside and out in the Meguro District of Tokyo, a few of the X-Men were having an intense feeling of deja-vu from it all, particularly from the fact that armed soldiers had once again come and unexpectedly kicked their door in. But, one big difference this time around was that these agents of HYDRA weren't there to take them prisoner, and fully intended on killing them all wholesale instead. The other big difference was that now those students, who had been forced to flee their home for fear of their safety when Colonel Stryker's men had come calling in Westchester, were no longer afraid.

Now, they were X-Men, and they were positively resolute to make sure that these HYDRA soldiers understood that fact beyond any shadow of a doubt.

"While Lady Hydra takes care of the main target, to us falls the honor of finishing the rest." One member of HYDRA's elite Tiger-Division said, as he and his partner were part of a larger sweep that had split up into two-person teams and were thoroughly going through the second floor of this spacious and multi-roomed penthouse.

As they entered into one of the sitting rooms on this floor, these two soldiers were quickly greeted by, what they thought, to be a most unusual creature.

"What is that?" The other masked HYDRA mercenary asked, as they now saw a purple reptilian-creature in the middle of the room, slowing flapping its wings to keep itself aloft in the air right in front of them.

"I'd say, an easy target." The first mercenary said, as a smile was clearly visible on the part of his masked face that was left uncovered, and he now aimed his semi-automatic rifle up at Lockheed.

But, while these two were completely focused on the flying dragon before them, they failed to notice a ghost of a girl who was now materializing behind them and coming up through the floor.

"Well, there's about to be one less of…whatever that thing is." The other soldier said, as he chambered and loaded his weapon as well, and then trained it also on Lockheed.

"No. There's not." Shadowcat said to them both in a calm, yet unusually stern voice, as she phased up into the room behind them wearing her black and pink-trimmed leather uniform, an instant before she thrust both of her hands into the backs of their necks.

While Shadowcat's intangibility powers could have the effect of shorting out electronic equipment, like TV's or laptops when she phased through them, she could also replicate a similar reaction in a human being. Such as, phasing her hand into the brain stem of a person at just the right spot and holding it just long enough to disrupt the neural communication between it and the rest of their body, effectively short-circuiting them. As these two HYDRA soldiers could now attest to.

Once they woke back up, of course.

"Good job, boy! Mama's gonna find you a real special treat, once we get through dealing with all these bad men." Shadowcat smiled and told Lockheed, as he had remembered exactly what he was supposed to do in their bait-and-phase strategy, which was one of the maneuvers the two had practiced for hours on end in the Danger Room together.

"Cooo…" Was the only sound Lockheed made in response to Shadowcat's compliment, as he flew over and landed on her shoulder, while she knelt down and picked up the soldiers' weapons, intentionally phased them together into a single, unusable mass.

Then, this Cat-and-Dragon pair sunk back down and disappeared into the floor together, preparing to go and set-up another set of unsuspecting HYDRA soldiers with their ruse.

Elsewhere, another X-Man was also engaged in an evasive maneuver against the invading HYDRA-mercs similar to theirs'. Although unlike Shadowcat and Lockheed's ploy, she had chosen to play a much simpler game of hide-and-seek with these armed men.

"You know, it's just sooo totally 'nox of you guys to come up here, just to crash 'n trash Mariko's place like this." Jubilee said, letting her Southern-California drawl saturate her words as she jumped out from behind some furniture into the center of another room. Jubilee was now dressed in her black and yellow-trimmed X-Men uniform with matching leather-duster and called out to the two teams of HYDRA soldiers' that had just passed by out in the hallway.

The men quickly turned back around to head into the room, their guns all drawn and now pointed at Jubilee. But, as seemed to be the order of the day these four soldiers had, just like their other HYDRA compatriots, unwittingly walked right into a trap laid out for them. An ensnarement that was initiated by Jubilee luring them into the room, and who now flashed a moderate-level plasma paff at them from her hands to temporarily blind them.

Then the ambush was finished off by Colossus, who sprang out from another part of the room wearing his own black and carmine-trimmed leather uniform, armoring up as he ran over to furiously knock these soldiers' senseless and out cold.

"Man, do we know how to hook up the tightest hustles, or what?" Jubilee gleefully remarked, as Colossus thunderously slammed the last of the HYDRA soldiers' over his head and forcefully down onto the floor.

"Yes, but you did not have to put yourself in such danger to do it. I could just as easily have taken care of them myself." Colossus turned and said to Jubilee, his voice retaining a slightly steely-tone to it thanks to his current armored-state.

"No way! I'm an X-Man too, and I can pull my pounds just like everyone else. Don't make me haveta go 'Kitty' all over you about it!" Jubilee laughed and replied while teasing Colossus, reminding him of his girlfriend's very 'un-timid' manner of getting her point across to others, particularly when the subject had anything to do with traditional gender roles.

"That…won't be necessary." Colossus smiled and told Jubilee, doing so in a tone befitting of his often dry-sense of humor. Just then, Colossus and Jubilee were joined in the room by a third person, but not one who was wearing a green uniform.

Although, her choice of attire still managed to draw their attention anyhow.

"That's some pretty fresh gear you got goin' on there." Jubilee now commented, as Leyu Yoshida walked into the room. Whom, neither had seen since the fighting had started, and who the X-Men had assumed had gone somewhere to take cover.

Leyu now came into the room wearing a red, long-sleeved leather top with a Japanese flag-emblem on the shoulder, which buckled horizontally across the front, and she had on a pair of tight black-leather pants with it. An outfit, while remaining unique all on its own, wasn't all that dissimilar from the one her brother Sunfire and his teammate Honey Lemon had on at the hospital the night before.

"There is something that I haven't told you. Like you, I too am a part of a team." Leyu started, as she stood and finished buckling the last of the straps to her uniform-top and across the leather black gloves on her hands, "I am known to them as Sunpyre, and we are a part of a special covert national defense-force the government has codenamed Big Her--"

But, Leyu was suddenly interrupted, when a deafening explosion went off outside. She, Jubilee, and Colossus all rushed over to a window in the room, looking out to see that a rocket-propelled grenade had just blown up a parked car on the street. A furious battle was now being waged down there between HYDRA and members' of the National Police Agency's recently arrived, and heavily-armed, Special Assault Team, Tokyo's own version of SWAT.

After a mechanized HYDRA hang-glider buzzed by right them close to the building's exterior, the trio also happened to take notice that Nightcrawler was down on the street as well, and was now caught in the middle of this rapidly-escalating conflict.

"I must go down there and help them." Sunpyre said, as she turned and took a few steps back from the window.

Jubilee and Colossus turned back towards the room's interior and saw that the it was now beginning to brightly glow all around Sunpyre, as she held both hands out in front of her. Sunpyre activated her own mutant power in earnest, using the heat pouring out from her body to burn a hole right through the window and the surrounding wall with a concentrated energy-beam.

Then suddenly, like a match being struck, Sunpyre's entire body was covered in an intense and all-consuming solar-flame. She used her mutant ability to levitate herself into the air, right before she shot of the room like a flaming bullet being sent through the large opening where the window had been just seconds before.

"**You go girl**!" Jubilee encouragingly exclaimed, as Sunpyre blew right past her and Colossus and continued on outside to give aid to her brother Sunfire, who himself had been vastly outnumbered up above the fighting on the street by HYDRA's air-squadron, "She, like, sure knows how to make an exit. Literally!"

"And, I think that I will also go down there myself, so that I can lend Nightcrawler a hand." Colossus now told Jubilee, as he looked down onto the battle taking place below.

"Okay, but you got a pretty long walk downstairs, since these snake-guys took out the elevator." Jubilee commented, as she also observed what was going on down on the street.

"I believe that I can come up with a much faster route than that." Colossus replied, as he flashed Jubilee a steely-smirk, an instant before he went and stood in front of the hole in the wall, looked down, and then jumped out from it.

Jubilee watched in slight astonishment, as the armored Russian traveled down to the ground at a harrowing rate of speed, angling himself to perform a dive-bomb into a parked HYDRA-LAV (Land Assault Vehicle), taking out its massive gun-turret and most rest of it at the same time.

"Show-off." Jubilee remarked with a slight grin, after she observed Colossus hit his intended target and completely demolish it upon impact from her vantage point a number of floors up above.

**……………………………………………………………**

"It's a shame that you won't be around to watch me finish off your friends and bride-to-be. But, at least you'll have some company to soon join you." Lady Hydra venomously stated to Wolverine, as she stood over him with her boots jammed down into his wrists and her hands clenched firmly around his neck, continuing with her strangling efforts against him.

"Not if Ah have anything to say about it!"

Having muttered her own declaration against Lady Hydra, Rogue limped her way across the room, and without giving her any warning, leapt onto the back of the HYDRA villainess. Rogue wrapped her own bare hands around the uncovered regions of Lady Hydra's neck, cinching a firm grip at her throat and intentionally making direct skin-to-skin contact with her.

"You've GOT to be kidding me? You're gonna have to do a lot better than that, little girl." Lady Hydra remarked, as she thought it a bad joke on Rogue's part that she would even have the sheer audacity jump onto her back, and then try to stop her by using her own choke-hold ploy against her.

"Don't worry, Ah intend to!" Rogue sharply replied, as she closed her eyes and prayed, while waiting for that old, familiar feeling to kick in.

Rogue's powers were such that they gave her the mutant ability to temporarily drain the memories, along with the very life essence of another person, absorbing them into herself. And in the case of another mutant, Rogue would in addition take on their particular mutant gift for a short period of time.

Determined to keep Lady Hydra from further hurting her friends', in spite of whatever personal impact that it might have on her, Rogue now held on for dear life and for the lives' of those friends. Once Lady Hydra began to feel a tugging, almost excruciating sensation on the insides of her skull, as though they were being torn asunder and then yanked out, she tried to throw Rogue off of her.

"What are you doing, you little bitch!" Lady Hydra shouted, as she released her grip around Logan's throat and tried, in vain, to shake free of the passenger now clamped onto her from behind.

"Showin' a real bitch just how it's done!" Rogue loudly responded, her tone filled with just as much candor in it, "Logan and Mariko're just like family to me, and Ah'll die before Ah let you hurt either of them!"

Having read through the dossier where she was briefed about the X-Men and their various powers', Lady Hydra had obviously made note of Wolverine's deadly claws, the metal one, the one who could control weather, the one who shot energy beams from his eyes, and the teleporter. But, thinking that Rogue's powers didn't pose much of a threat to her, and that her own impervious powers would grant her immunity from their effects, Lady Hydra had until now simply ignored Rogue's efforts and had maintained her own focus on the task at hand, which was trying to squeeze the life out of Logan.

But, by the time Lady Hydra came to realize the folly in her decision, it would already be too late for her to take any corrective measures to remedy that mistake. Lady Hydra now began to feel extremely dizzy and Rogue herself also began to feel light-headed, since this was the longest that she had ever intentionally held onto another person and used her mutant draining powers on them.

In just a few brief moments, both Lady Hydra and Rogue blacked out completely and fell into a collective heap together on the floor, both of them now rendered completely unconscious.

**……………………………………………………………**

**_Bamf_**!

This sound was one accompanied by the familiar sensation of being pulled out of a vacuum, along with the even more familiar stench of smoke and brimstone, as Nightcrawler completed one of his teleportation-jumps down on this battle-ravaged street in Tokyo's Meguro District. And, while it may have become a commonplace occurrence for him to instantaneously jump from one place to another in this manner, it was a wholly new experience for his pint-sized passenger, whom Nightcrawler had ported out to grab from the immediate harm that she had inadvertently found herself in.

"(Again, Again!)" The little girl excitedly shouted, after she and Nightcrawler had just finished a chain-teleport to avoid the bullets that were flying by in both directions on the street, and after he had just given her the ultimate piggy-back ride.

"(Perhaps, once all of this excitement has died down, _Liebchen_.)" Nightcrawler smiled and replied, as he looked back at the little girl that he was carrying around on his back and spoke to her in her native Japanese. But now that they had found a safe place on the side of one of the buildings' to fall back to, Nightcrawler was more than content with keeping her there out of harm's way for the time-being.

Nightcrawler and his tiny new companion stood and gazed out onto the battle taking place, which by now had already kicked up about ten notches past high-gear, and they suddenly saw the armored X-Man Colossus seemingly come from out of nowhere and crash down into a parked HYDRA-LAV like a solid-steel wrecking ball. But, almost even more spectacular than that, was what the pair witnessed next.

"**GoGo Tomago**!"

Now speeding by in front of them was, what they assumed was probably a person, but appeared as nothing more than a black, red, and gold high-speed blur that barreled down the street past them and slammed right into another parked HYDRA–LAV nearby. The HYDRA heavy-gunner that had been stationed at the top of the armored-vehicle was stopped from continuing his random-targeting on the street, while at the same this vehicle was also totally obliterated by this member of Japan's premiere super-hero team, who then continued on down the street unimpeded.

Just then, Nightcrawler and the young girl once again looked up skyward, this time when the roar of approaching aircraft could be heard. They now saw a half-dozen twin-rotor helicopters flying in overhead, which were part of SHIELD's Kanto regional forces that had been scrambled in to aid in this fight against a HYDRA assault squad, and whom Maverick was now leading in that effort.

SHIELD's arrival meant that HYDRA would now have to contend with the one organization, who was their most formidable adversary. But HYDRA wasn't ready to give up just yet, not without a fight. This fact was well displayed by one of their numerous mechanized hang-gliders managing to hit one of the SHIELD transport helicopters with deadly-accuracy, as a well targeted mini-missile struck this particular helicopter while it had been in a downward descent. This caused the SHIELD dual-rotored chopper to tumble and careen straight down into the street, killing or injuring most of the agents that were still harnessed to it by thick and heavy fixed long-ropes when it crashed, and who had been attempting to abseil out of both sides of their helicopter to cable themselves down to join the battle taking place.

"I suggest that we hit them as fast and as hard as we can, before they have the opportunity to beat us to the punch!" Maverick said into the miniature microphone of his ear-piece comm-device, instructing the SHIELD agents under his command not to hesitate an instant in ingratiating themselves into this armed counter-offensive.

Although, Maverick himself didn't even have to think about it.

This war-hardened soldier dropped down from his transport chopper and hit the ground running, firing a lengthy volley of semi-automatic rounds from his modified AR-15 rifle at the HYDRA foot-soldiers, who had all taken up positions near the LAV's that were parked up and down the street. All the while, more SHIELD reinforcements continued arriving, as they came down from much larger and higher-flying cargo transport planes flying over. These agents were zooming through the air via rocket-fueled packs strapped to their backs, and with the assorted rifles and other heavy weaponry in their possession, they engaged the HYDRA jet-powered gliders that, until now, had pretty-much maintained aerial supremacy over this conflict zone.

And just like that, in what seemed to only be just a matter of minutes, the tide of battle had turned. And HYDRA's forces, the ones who were still able to move, were now falling back into a full retreat with SHIELD in tenacious pursuit behind them. With the extremely dangerous situation of the previous moments appearing to have also departed with them, the citizenry who had bunkered themselves down during this violent disturbance, were now free to come out and inspect the considerable damage left in its wake.

"(Now, can we go again?)" The little girl happily asked of Nightcrawler, as they walked out onto the edge of the sidewalk on the street together.

While the little girl, who remained clinging to Nightcrawler's back and shoulders, unabashedly expressed her desire to have another ride by way of his teleportation powers, he now stood and took particular notice of the devastation left before them.

"(**Noriko! Noriko!**)"

Nightcrawler quickly looked up to see now running at him from across the street was a man, who was obviously this little girl Noriko's father. And while Kurt was no glory-hound by any stretch of the imagination, part of him did expect to at least hear some degree of thanks from Noriko's father, for his rather courageous actions in the face of such great danger.

_Boy, was he in for a big surprise…_

"(Get away from her you…whatever you are, get away from my daughter!)" Noriko's father came over and shouted at him, as he reached out to grab his daughter and yank her away from Nightcrawler, "(There's no telling what diseases you might catch from him!)"

With his short and angry diatribe now finished, Noriko's father jerked his daughter along with him as they hurriedly made their way up the sidewalk of this battle-ravaged street. But, as she managed to barely keep in step with her father's furious pace, Noriko was able to turn back around towards Nightcrawler, flashing him a smile as their eyes met for one last time. Meeting him this day would be an experience that she would never forget, and she would continue to carry memories of this man, who had shown such bravery by risking his own safety for her, with her for years to come.

In fact, Noriko would remind Kurt of it, when the day arrived where she'd finally be able to gladly return the favor to him.

**………………………………………………..……………**

While the fighting had come to an end on the street, the same could be pretty much said for the upper-penthouse levels of the exclusive Omonaru building nearby. But, while HYDRA's forces outside were now on the run from SHIELD, those who had ventured inside had wound up being soundly defeated by the X-Men, and none of them feeling that sting more so than their field-commander, Lady Hydra.

"Unnnhh…the hell?" Logan now muttered, as he sat up on the living room floor of the penthouse, regaining consciousness with his throat and wrists feeling extremely raw and bruised, to say the least. He looked around to scan the room, seeing that it was almost a complete wreck, and then he saw something else.

Just a few feet away, Logan observed Remy standing there with his metal quarterstaff extended in hand, and a melancholy expression stamped onto his face.

"What's the matter ,'Gumbo'? Didn't we win?" Logan asked Remy, as he struggled up to his feet.

"Yeah, we won." Remy replied, although from his rather dejected tone, you would have thought the exact opposite to be the case.

Having had blacked out temporarily when Lady Hydra was attempting to strangle the life from him, Logan vaguely remembered hearing someone come up from behind to grab Lady Hydra and get her off of him, and he had assumed it to be one of the X-Men from downstairs coming up to help them. But, as Logan regained his full bearings, he noticed that Remy was standing there with his hands and face supportively propped up on his quarterstaff, leaning against it while looking right down with a very glum expression painted on his face. And when he followed Remy's gaze and looked down himself, that's when Logan finally realized why.

"What happened?" Logan anxiously asked, as soon as he saw Rogue lying on the floor, with Mariko kneeling on the floor behind her to cradle her head in her lap.

"I do not know precisely. When I came to, I saw Rogue and this other woman struggling together. Then, they both began to scream simultaneously. It was unlike anything I have ever heard before, as if their spirits' were being ripped in half." Mariko recounted, as she slowly and comfortingly stroked her hand through Rogue's hair, while remembering to be ever mindful of not making direct skin-to-skin contact with her, especially after what she had just seen, "Then suddenly, they collapsed together onto the floor here."

Logan then noticed that not too far away, Lady Hydra was also laying on the floor unconscious. Her skin, particularly the parts visible around her green facial mask, had now taken on a very pale complexion, and Logan's heightened hearing detected that she sounded as though she were barely breathing. Ignoring the deep temptation to pop his claws out and finish the job, Logan instead turned his attention back to Rogue, kneeling down beside her and Mariko.

"Come on, Rogue-darlin'. You gotta snap outta this." Logan encouragingly said to her, but didn't receive any form of a verbal response from Rogue.

"Okay, you guy's can bust out the champagne, and even share some this time with us under-aged…" Jubilee was triumphantly boasting, as she, Kitty, and Alison made their way upstairs to the penthouse's top floor, but was struck speechless once she entered the living room.

Having just beaten the last of the invading HYDRA mercenaries, whom Scott and Ororo were now securing in anticipation of SHIELD coming to pick them up, they were all in a celebratory mood. Until, they caught sight of the scene now before them.

"Oh God, what happened up here?" Kitty now inquired, as she, Lockheed, and the others rushed over to where Logan, Mariko, and Gambit were, once they saw Rogue unconscious on the floor.

"Rogue just saved us all, 'Short-stuff'." Logan looked up and told Kitty in a simple and matter-of-fact tone, which only he we was capable of using to truly relay the gravity of that statement. And in doing so, making any further words on the subject unnecessary.

**………………………………………………………**

**Epilogue**

Nearly 72 hours after the battle in Tokyo, where SHIELD had routed those HYDRA forces loyal to Madame Hydra and had defeated her top lieutenant Lady Hydra, Madame Hydra herself was still nowhere to be found, having managed to elude capture herself when her Yokohama headquarters was raided and shut down by Agent Jessica Drew and her SHIELD strike-team. But while Madame Hydra, who was also known as Viper, may have been a woman who was temporarily without a base of operations, she was never a woman without a plan…

Location: _Tokyo, Japan- Tokyo Detention Facility_

Being that it was the middle of the night, most of the detainees in Tokyo's largest jail were asleep after lock-down procedures had been instituted. But, as had been the order over the past few days, one inmate was about to once again receive another unexpected late-night visitor.

"(Who, are you?)" Keniuchio Harada asked, as he now felt a presence with him in the darkened cell. He immediately sat up on his bed wearing his dark-blue inmate's jumpsuit, and he noticed that whoever had come in to join him, had done so without opening the large steel door of his solitary-confinement cell.

"(A friend, one who hopes that a mutually beneficial agreement can be brokered between us. I have use for a man, such as yourself.)" A female voice replied, as Harada was now able to make out a shadowed figure standing a few feet away, which he also noticed to be definitely female in the jail cell with him, and who was dressed in a tight, olive-green leather outfit.

"(At this point, considering that my options are severely limited, anything would be an improvement upon my current state of affairs. What is it that you propose?)" Harada inquired of her, as he stood up from his bunk and immediately recognized this woman to be Madame Hydra, whose reputation was perhaps as notorious as his own, if not more so.

"(Your freedom, in exchange for your formidable services as a skilled mercenary and assassin.)" Viper explained to him.

"(And how do you intend to get me out of here?)" Harada stood and asked her, pointing to the computerized power-inhibitor still strapped onto his right arm.

"(The same way that I came in.)" Viper replied, as she crossed her gloved-arms over in front of her and looked up at him, "(Do we have a deal?)"

"(We do. I am now in your debt." Harada said to Viper, as she walked over towards him.

"(Do not worry, you will be given more than ample opportunity to repay me. For now, we have an empire to regain, my Samurai.)" Viper responded with a sinister smirk.

"(And from your words, it appears that your ambition may indeed rival my own.)" The much taller Harada looked down and remarked to her.

"(Yes, if you desire the entire world as I do.)" Viper smiled and replied, as she put both of her arms around Harada's massively, well-proportioned torso.

"(What is our next destination, the Tokyo Underground?)" Harada asked her, having tremendous knowledge of the network used by those individuals within the city who wished to keep a low-profile, since he had been instrumental in helping to create it in the first place.

"(For tonight, just long enough to allow us to tie up a few loose ends. But, we will soon be departing from Japan entirely, for awhile.)" Viper informed him, as she turned the circular disc on the top of a ring on her hand, a sophisticated device that had originally been designed by one of the premier technological organizations in the world known as Advanced Idea Mechanics, or AIM for short.

As The Silver Samurai and Viper stood huddled together, they were both enveloped in a mysterious, brightly-glowing aura of pure energy that now surrounded them. And right before they disappeared into thin-air together, Viper had a few final parting words for her new partner in crime.

"(Tell me, have you ever heard of a place called Madripoor…)"

**…………………………………………………..………**

Location: _Agarashima, Japan- Yashida Ancestral Compound_

Roughly 200 miles to the north of Tokyo, in one of Japan's moderately mountainous regions, sits the ancestral residence of one of the country's most revered families. And it is here that a number of important national and international dignitaries have gathered, including the Emperor and Empress of Japan to be counted amongst them, for the marriage of the Clan Yashida's Head to her official consort.

Less than half an hour ago, Mariko Yashida and John Logan had exchanged their sacred vows in a traditional Shinto wedding ceremony, declaring their devotion to one another and their commitment to building a new life together in front of all of their friends and family. And with the formal ceremony having concluded a short time ago, Logan and Mariko had changed out of the traditional Kimono-style wardrobe prescribed that they wear during the nuptial rites. Now, they were dressed in more customarily Western wedding attire, and Logan and Mariko made their way towards their own wedding reception each in a tuxedo and bridal gown, set to greet and thank their guests' for their attendance.

Now, able to officially do so as husband and wife.

"You sure you know what you've just gotten yourself into?" Logan smirked and teasingly remarked to Mariko right beside him, as they walked hand-in-hand down a corridor that led to the grand hall within the compound, speaking to one another while they still had a few brief seconds alone to themselves, "With who I am and what I do, danger's always gonna be a part of my life. And anyone who wants to be a part of my life is bound to catch some of the broadside from that."

"In case you have not noticed, my beloved, being a part of my family is not without difficulties all of its own. So with that said, I believe that I am more than capable of handling anything that you are able to dish out. " Mariko laughed and just as humorously replied, as they stopped and stood right outside of the hall's entrance while their arrival was being formally announced to the guests' inside, the happy couple exchanging a quick and private kiss before they entered.

Once inside, Mariko and Logan spent roughly the next hour shaking hands and receiving congratulations from everyone on their new life together. Which was followed by numerous speeches also being made on their behalf, and culminated in the principal activity for any newlywed couple, the cutting of the wedding cake.

After a considerable amount of time had passed, the guests' were eventually left to mingle in a more informal fashion together, as Logan came over to a somewhat secluded corner in the hall and spoke to Remy.

"So, how's that side o' yours doin', Cajun?" Logan came up and amicably asked Remy, who underneath his royal-blue and black Kimono, still had his right rib-cage heavily taped from the fight that they had been involved in a few days ago.

"It's comin' along. And from now on, Remy Lebeau just gonna have t'find somewhere else safer than here t'go on vacation, since it seems like I got a nasty habit of takin' a broken-rib or two back home as a souvenir." Remy chuckled in response, as he mockingly touched the right side of his sternum in a gingerly fashion.

"Say, where's Rogue at? I didn't see her over with the rest o' the bridesmaids', all gigglin' their heads off about somethin'?" Logan inquired, referring to the fact that Leyu, Rogue, Jubilee, and Kitty had shared duties and each served in a capacity that was roughly the equivalent of bridesmaids' for Mariko during the actual wedding ceremony, while Kurt had been at Logan's side as his best man.

"She said she was gonna go outside and catch herself a breath of fresh air." Remy revealed, as he gestured over towards an exit close by that led outside.

Heading over to the exit and walking through it to the compound's spacious and intricately-designed garden area outdoors, Logan soon saw Rogue standing out there, still in her red and gold Kimono and she had a golden, butterfly-shaped comb in her hair used to pin it up, which was worn in a fashion similar to her other co-bridesmaids'.

"Hey, darlin'." Logan said aloud, as he stepped down into the lengthy and slightly sunken garden to announce his presence to her.

"Hey yourself." Rogue smiled and replied, as she turned back around to face Logan, "Ah woulda figured you and Mariko'd be busy planning y'all's adventurous honeymoon right about now?"

"I think we've had more than enough excitement for awhile. Later tonight, we're headin' off to stay at a place M'iko's family's got outside of Osaka, which is pretty low-key and a nice place for just the two of us to relax together after everything we been through over the last couple days." Logan cheerfully replied, as he walked over and stopped a few feet away from Rogue, "I just wanted to come out here tell you that you and the other girls' looked great today, and that we appreciate you all volunteerin' to fill in as her ceremonial-assistants' today."

"It was an honor, and Ah know Ah was more than glad to do it." Rogue told him, as the sun was just starting to show hints of setting off in the horizon behind her.

Then, their conversation came to a momentary pause, and Logan seemed to search for just the right words before speaking again.

"I also wanted to come and say thank you, for everything you did back in Tokyo. I can't tell you how grateful I am for you puttin' yourself out on the line like that for me, and especially for Mariko, and I'll never forget it." Logan now told her, with tremendous appreciation in his voice.

"C'mon, it's nothin'. It's what we X-Men do, and Ah know you would've done the same thing for me. Matter of fact, you have done the same thing for me." Rogue replied, referring to the not too distant past when a certain gentleman scaled up the outside of New York's Statue of Liberty, nearly sacrificing himself on that night just to rescue her from certain death.

"I hear ya, Darlin'." Logan poignantly replied, as he looked at Rogue again for a brief moment and smiled, before turning back around to head inside to the reception and rejoin his new wife.

In a matter of moments Logan was gone, and Rogue was once again left alone out in the compound's gardens. She thought to herself just how very happy she was about Logan and Mariko getting married, and how she was glad to have gotten the chance to return a favor owed to him in such a meaningful fashion, giving the greatest wedding gift that she could think of to the man who had taught her so much.

But, as the old saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.

As the evening air began to carry a slight chill in it, Rogue wrapped her arms around herself. Then, she began to float a couple of feet upward into the air, hovering and slowly twirling around with a bird's-eye view of the garden. Rogue now closed her eyes, and could hear a faint voice screaming at her from the recesses of her own mind. It was the voice of a woman, who was now just as much a part of Rogue, as she was herself.

Rogue was now reminded that some actions, despite being motivated by even the noblest of intentions, can have long and far-reaching consequences. Ultimately, time would be the judge of just how successfully Rogue learned to handle these new powers and responsibility that had been bestowed upon, this new burden for her to now bear…

**………………………………………..………………**

**………………………………………..………………**

A/N: I just wanted to take a sec and thank everyone for sticking through this story with me and for putting up with the, at times, lengthy intervals between updates. I've appreciated everyone who've taken the time to read and review the various fics' tied into this storyline. But, after giving it some deep and some very serious thought, I've decided to make this chapter the final one of this current story-arc.

The main reason is that I've pretty much accomplished what I originally set out to do with this story (and then some), and I have a few other story ideas that I'd like to focus on and hopefully have out down the line. So again, I want to thank everybody for their support, it's been an awesome ride. And I hope to be hearing from some of you soon, if you don't hear from me first.


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